Different Seasons

Stephen King

Contents

RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

APT PUPIL

THE BODY

THE BREATHING METHOD

RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK

REDEMPTION

There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I

guess-I'm the guy who can get it for you. Tailor-made cigarettes, a bag of

reefer, if you're partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or

daughter's high school graduation, or almost anything else within reason,

that is. It wasn't always that way. I came to Shawshank when I was just

twenty, and I am one of the few people in our happy little family who is

willing to own up to what he did. I committed murder. I put a large

insurance policy on my wife, who was three years older than I was, and

then I fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given us as a

wedding present. It worked out exactly as I had planned, except I hadn't

planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbour woman and the neighbour

woman's infant son on the way down Castle Hill and into town. The brakes

let go and the car crashed through the bushes at the edge of the town

common, gathering speed. Bystanders said it must have been doing fifty or

better when it hit the base of the Civil War statue and burst into flames. I

also hadn't planned on getting caught, but caught I was. I got a season's pass

into this place. Maine has no death penalty, but the district attorney saw to it

that I was tried for all three deaths and given three life sentences, to run one

after the other. That fixed up any chance of parole I might have, for a long,

long time. The judge called what I had done 'a hideous, heinous crime', and

it was, but it is also in the past now. You can look it up in the yellowing

files of the Castle Rock Call, where the big headlines announcing my

conviction look sort of funny and antique next to the news of Hitler and

Mussolini and FDR's alphabet soup agencies.

Have I rehabilitated myself, you ask? I don't know what that word means,

at least as far as prisons and corrections go. I think it's a politician's word. It

may have some other meaning, and it may be that I will have a chance to

find out, but that is the future something cons teach themselves not to

think about. I was young, good-looking, and from the poor side of town. I

knocked up a pretty, sulky, headstrong girl who lived in one of the fine old

houses on Carbine Street. Her father was agreeable to the marriage if I

would take a job in the optical company he owned and 'work my way up'. I

found out that what he really had in mind was keeping me in his house and

under his thumb, like a disagreeable pet that has not quite been housebroken

and which may bite. Enough hate eventually piled up to cause me to do

what I did. Given a second chance I would not do it again, but I'm not sure

that means I am rehabilitated.

Anyway, it's not me I want to tell you about; I want to tell you about a

guy named Andy Dufresne. But before I can tell you about Andy, I have to

explain a few other things about myself. It won't take long.

As I said, I've been the guy who can get it for you here at Shawshank for

damn near forty years. And that doesn't just mean contraband items like

extra cigarettes or booze, although those items always top the list. But I've

gotten thousands of other items for men doing time here, some of them

perfectly legal yet hard to come by in a place where you've supposedly been

brought to be punished. There was one fellow who was in for raping a little

girl and exposing himself to dozens of others; I got him three pieces of pink

Vermont marble and he did three lovely sculptures out of them- a baby, a

boy of about twelve, and a bearded young man. He called them The Three

Ages of Jesus, and those pieces of sculpture are now in the parlour of a man

who used to be governor of this state. Or here's a name you may remember

if you grew up north of Massachusetts-Robert Alan Cote. In 1951 he tried

to rob the First Mercantile Bank of Mechanic Falls, and the hold-up turned

into a bloodbath-six dead in the end, two of them members of the gang,

three of them hostages, one of them a young state cop

who put his head up at the wrong time and got a bullet in the eye. Cote

had a penny collection. Naturally they weren't going to let him have it in

here, but with a little help from his mother and a middleman who used to

drive a laundry truck, I was able to get it to him. I told him, Bobby, you

must be crazy, wanting to have a coin collection in a stone hotel full of

thieves. He looked at me and smiled and said, I know where to keep them.

They'll be safe enough. Don't you worry. And he was right. Bobby Cote

died of a brain tumor in 1967, but that coin collection has never turned up.

I've gotten men chocolates on Valentine's Day; I got three of those green

milkshakes they serve at McDonald's around St Paddy's Day for a crazy

Irishman named O'Malley; I even arranged for a midnight showing of Deep

Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones for a party of twenty men who had

pooled their resources to rent the films although I ended up doing a week

in solitary for that little escapade. It's the risk you run when you're the guy

who can get it.

I've gotten reference books and fuck-books, joke novelties like

handbuzzers and itching powder, and on more than one occasion I've seen

that a long-timer has gotten a pair of panties from his wife or his girlfriend

and I guess you'll know what guys in here do with such items during the

long nights when time draws out like a blade. I don't get all those things

gratis, and for some items the price comes high. But I don't do it just for the

money; what good is money to me? I'm never going to own a Cadillac car

or fly off to Jamaica for two weeks in February. I do it for the same reason

that a good butcher will only sell you fresh meat: I got a reputation and I

want to keep it. The only two things I refuse to handle are guns and heavy

drugs. I won't help anyone kill himself or anyone else. I have enough killing

on my mind to last me a lifetime.

Yeah, I'm a regular Neiman-Marcus. And so when Andy Dufresne came

to me in 1949 and asked if I could smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison

for him, I said it would be no problem at all. And it wasn't.

When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was

a short neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore

gold-rimmed spectacles. His fingernails were always clipped, and they were

always clean. That's a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose, but

it seems to sum Andy up for me. He always looked as if he should have

been wearing a tie. On the outside he had been a vice-president in the trust

department of a large Portland bank. Good work for a man as young as he

was, especially when you consider how conservative most banks are and

you have to multiply that conservatism by ten when you get up into New

England, where folks don't like to trust a man with their money unless he's

bald, limping, and constantly plucking at his pants to get his truss around

straight Andy was in for murdering his wife and her lover.

As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they

read that scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of

Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls

to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They

read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most

cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst

luck was that their mothers carried them to term. In all my years at

Shawshank, there have been less than ten men whom I believed when they

told me they were innocent Andy Dufresne was one of them, although I

only became convinced of his innocence over a period of years. If I had

been on the jury that heard his case in Portland Superior Court over six

stormy weeks in 1947-48, I would have voted to convict, too.

It was one hell of a case, all right; one of those juicy ones with all the

right elements. There was a beautiful girl with society connections (dead), a

local sports figure (also dead), and a prominent young businessman in the

dock. There was this, plus all the scandal the newspapers could hint at. The

prosecution had an open-and-shut case. The trial only lasted as long as it

did because the DA was planning to run for the US House of

Representatives and he wanted John Q Public to get a good long look at his

phiz. It was a crackerjack legal circus, with spectators getting in line at four

in the morning, despite the subzero temperatures, to assure themselves of a

seat.

The facts of the prosecution's case that Andy never contested were these:

That he had a wife, Linda Collins Dufresne; that in June of 1947 she had

expressed an interest in learning the game of golf at the Falmouth Hills

Country Club; that she did indeed take lessons for four months; that her

instructor was the Falmouth Hills golf pro, Glenn Quentin; that in late

August of 1947 Andy learned that Quentin and his wife had become lovers;

that Andy and Linda Dufresne argued bitterly on the afternoon of 10

September 1947; that the subject of their argument was her infidelity.

He testified that Linda professed to be glad he knew; the sneaking

around, she said, was distressing. She told Andy that she planned to obtain

a Reno divorce. Andy told her he would see her in hell before he would see

her in Reno. She went off to spend the night with Quentin in Quentin's

rented bungalow not far from the golf course. The next morning his

cleaning woman found both of them dead in bed. Each had been shot four

times.

It was that last fact that mitigated more against Andy than any of the

others. The DA with the political aspirations made a great deal of it in his

opening statement and his closing summation. Andrew Dufresne, he said,

was not a wronged husband seeking a hot-blooded revenge against his

cheating wife; that, the DA said, could be understood, if not condoned. But

this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA thundered at

the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun

empty and then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again!

FOUR FOR HIM AND FOUR FOR HER, the Portland Sun blared. The

Boston Register dubbed him The Even-Steven Killer.

A clerk from the Wise Pawnshop in Lewiston testified that he had sold a

six-shot.38 Police Special to Andrew Dufresne just two days before the

double murder. A bartender from the country club bar testified that Andy

had come in around seven o'clock on the evening of 10 September, had

tossed off three straight whiskeys in a twenty-minute period-when he got up

from the bar-stool he told the bartender that he was going up to Glenn

Quentin's house and he, the bartender, could 'read about the rest of it in the

papers'. Another clerk, this one from the Handy-Pik store a mile or so from

Quentin's house, told the court that Dufresne had come in around quarter to

nine on the same night. He purchased cigarettes, three quarts of beer, and

some dish-towels. The county medical examiner testified that Quentin and

the Dufresne woman had been killed between eleven p. m. and two a. m. on

the night of 10-11 September. The detective from the Attorney General's

office who had been in charge of the case testified that there was a turnout

less than seventy yards from the bungalow, and that on the afternoon of 11

September, three pieces of evidence had been removed from that turnout:

first item, two empty quart bottles of Narragansett Beer (with the

defendant's fingerprints on them); the second item, twelve cigarette ends

(all Kools, the defendant's brand); third item, a plaster moulage of a set of

tire tracks (exactly matching the tread-and-wear pattern of the tires on the

defendant's 1947 Plymouth).

In the living room of Quentin's bungalow, four dishtowels had been

found lying on the sofa. There were bullet-holes through them and powder-

burns on them.

The detective theorized (over the agonized objections of Andy's lawyer)

that the murderer had wrapped the towels around the muzzle of the murder-

weapon to muffle the sound of the gunshots. Andy Dufresne took the stand

in his own defence and told his story calmly, coolly, and dispassionately. He

said he had begun to hear distressing rumours about his wife and Glenn

Quentin as early as the last week in July. In August he had become

distressed enough to investigate a bit. On an evening when Linda was

supposed to have gone shopping in Portland after her tennis lesson, Andy

had followed her and Quentin to Quentin's one-story rented house

(inevitably dubbed 'the love-nest' by the papers). He had parked in the

turnout until Quentin drove her back to the country club where her car was

parked, about three hours later.

'Do you mean to tell this court that your wife did not recognize your

brand-new Plymouth sedan behind Quentin's car?' the DA asked him on

cross-examination. 'I swapped cars for the evening with a friend,' Andy

said, and this cool admission of how well-planned his investigation had

been did him no good at all in the eyes of the jury. After returning the

friend's car and picking up his own, he had gone home. Linda had been in

bed, reading a book. He asked her how her trip to Portland had been. She

replied that it had been fun, but she hadn't seen anything she liked well

enough to buy. That's when I knew for sure,' Andy told the breathless

spectators. He spoke in the same calm, remote voice in which he delivered

almost all of his testimony. 'What was your frame of mind in the seventeen

days between then and the night your wife was murdered?' Andy's lawyer

asked him.

'I was in great distress,' Andy said calmly, coldly. Like a man reciting a

shopping list he said that he had considered suicide, and had even gone so

far as to purchase a gun in Lewiston on 8 September.

His lawyer then invited him to tell the jury what had happened after his

wife left to meet Glenn Quentin on the night of the murders. Andy told

them and the impression he made was the worst possible.

I knew him for close to thirty years, and I can tell you he was the most

self-possessed man I've ever known. What was right with him he'd only

give you a little at a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up

inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as some writer or other has

called it, you would never know. He was the type of man who, if he had

decided to commit suicide, would do it without leaving a note but not until

his affairs had been put neatly in order. If he had cried on the witness stand,

or if his voice had thickened and grown hesitant, even if he had gotten

yelling at that Washington-bound District Attorney, I don't believe he would

have gotten the life sentence he wound up with. Even if he had've he would

have been out on parole by 1954. But he told his story like a recording

machine, seeming to say to the jury: this is it. Take it or leave it. They left

it.

He said he was drunk that night, that he'd been more or less drunk since

24 August, and that he was a man who didn't handle his liquor very well. Of

course that by itself would have been hard for any jury to swallow. They

just couldn't see this coldly self-possessed young man in the neat double-

breasted three-piece woollen suit ever getting falling-down drunk over his

wife's sleazy little affair with some smalltown golf pro. I believed it because

I had a chance to watch Andy that those six men and six women didn't

have. Andy Dufresne took just four drinks a year all the time I knew him.

He would meet me in the exercise yard every year about a week before his

birthday and then again about two weeks before Christmas. On each

occasion he would arrange for a bottle of Jack Daniels. He bought it the

way most cons arrange to buy their stuff-the slave's wages they pay in here,

plus a little of his own. Up until 1965 what you got for your time was a

dime an hour. In '65 they raised it all the way

up to a quarter. My commission on liquor was and is ten per cent, and

when you add on that surcharge to the price of a fine sippin' whiskey like

the Black Jack, you get an idea of how many hours of Andy Dufresne's

sweat in the prison laundry was going to buy his four drinks a year.

On the morning of his birthday, 20 September, he would have himself a

big knock, and then he'd have another that night after lights out. The

following day he'd give the rest of the bottle back to me, and I would share

it around. As for the other bottle, he dealt himself one drink Christmas night

and another on New Year's Eve. Then that one would also come to me with

instructions to pass it on. Four drinks a year -and that is the behaviour of a

man who has been bitten hard by the bottle. Hard enough to draw blood. He

told the jury that on the night of the 10th he had been so drunk he could

only remember what had happened in little isolated snatches. He had gotten

drunk that afternoon-'I took on a double helping of Dutch courage' is how

he put it -before taking on Linda.

After she left to meet Quentin, he remembered deciding to confront them.

On the way to Quentin's bungalow, he swung into the country club for a

couple of quick ones. He could not, he said, remember telling the bartender

he could 'read about the rest of it in the papers', or saying anything to him at

all. He remembered buying beer in the Handy-Pik, but not the dishtowels.

'Why would I want dishtowels?' he asked, and one of the papers reported

that three of the lady jurors shuddered.

Later, much later, he speculated to me about the clerk who had testified

on the subject of those dishtoweis, and I think it's worth jotting down what

he said. 'Suppose that, during their search for witnesses,' Andy said one day

in the yard, 'they stumble on this fellow who sold me the beer that night. By

then three days have gone by. The facts of the case have been broadsided in

all the papers. Maybe they ganged up on the guy, five or six cops, plus the

dick from the attorney general's office, plus the DA's assistant. Memory is a

pretty subjective thing, Red. They could have started out with "Isn't it

possible that he purchased four or five dishtowels?" and worked their way

up from there. If enough people want you to remember something, that can

be a pretty powerful persuader.' I agreed that it could.

'But there's one even more powerful,' Andy went on in that musing way

of his. 'I think it's at least possible that he convinced himself. It was the

limelight. Reporters asking him questions, his picture in the papers all

topped, of course, by his star turn in court. I'm not saying that he

deliberately falsified his story, or perjured himself. I think it's possible that

lie could have passed a lie detector test with flying colours, or sworn on his

mother's sacred name that I bought those dishtowels. But still memory is

such a goddam subjective thing.

'I know this much: even though my own lawyer thought I had to be lying

about half my story, he never bought that business about the dishtowels. It's

crazy on the face of it. I was pig-drunk, too drunk to have been thinking

about muffling the gunshots. If I'd done it, I just would have let them rip.'

He went up to the turnout and parked there. He drank beer and smoked

cigarettes. He watched the lights downstairs in Quentin's place go out. He

watched a single light go on upstairs and fifteen minutes later he watched

that one go out. He said he could guess the rest.

'Mr Dufresne, did you then go up to Glenn Quentin's house and kill the

two of them?' his lawyer thundered.

'No, I did not,' Andy answered. By midnight, he said, he was sobering up.

He was also feeling the first signs of a bad hangover. He decided to go

home and sleep it off and think about the whole thing in a more adult

fashion the next day. 'At that time,

as I drove home, I was beginning to think that the wisest course would be

to simply let her go to Reno and get her divorce.'

'Thank you, Mr Dufresne.'

The DA popped up.

'You divorced her in the quickest way you could think of, didn't you? You

divorced her with a.38 revolver wrapped in dishtowels, didn't you?'

'No sir, I did not,' Andy said calmly.

'And then you shot her lover.'

'No, sir.'

'You mean you shot Quentin first?'

'I mean I didn't shoot either one of them. I drank two quarts of beer and

smoked however many cigarettes that the police found at the turnout. Then

I drove home and went to bed.'

'You told the jury that between 24 August and 10 September, you were

feeling suicidal.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Suicidal enough to buy a revolver.'

'Yes.'

'Would it bother you overmuch, Mr Dufresne, if I told you that you do

not seem to me to be the suicidal type?'

'No,' Andy said, 'but you don't impress me as being terribly sensitive, and

I doubt very much that, if I were feeling suicidal, I would take my problem

to you.'

There was a slight tense titter in the courtroom at this, but it won him no

points with the jury.

'Did you take your.38 with you on the night of September?'

'No; as I've already testified -'

'Oh, yes!' The DA smiled sarcastically. 'You threw it into the river, didn't

you? The Royal River. On the afternoon of 9 September.'

'Yes, sir.'

'One day before the murders.'

'Yes, sir.'

'That's convenient, isn't it?'

'It's neither convenient nor inconvenient. Only the truth.'

'I believe you heard Lieutenant Mincher's testimony?' Mincher had been

in charge of the party which had dragged the stretch of the Royal near Pond

Bridge, from which Andy had testified he had thrown the gun. The police

had not found it 'Yes, sir. You know I heard it.'

Then you heard him testify that they found no gun, although they

dragged for three days.

That was rather convenient, too, wasn't it?'

'Convenience aside, it's a fact that they didn't find the gun,' Andy

responded calmly. 'But I should like to point out to both you and the jury

that the Pond Road Bridge is very close to where the Royal River empties

into the Bay of Yarmouth. The current is strong. The gun may have been

carried out into the bay itself.'

'And so no comparison can be made between the riflings on the bullets

taken from the bloodstained corpses of your wife and Mr Glenn Quentin

and the riflings on the barrel of your gun. That's correct, isn't it, Mr

Dufresne?'

'Yes.'

That's also rather convenient, isn't it?'

At that, according to the papers, Andy displayed one of the few slight

emotional reactions he allowed himself during the entire six-week period of

the trial. A slight, bitter smile crossed his face.

'Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, and since I am telling the truth

about throwing my gun into the river the day before the crime took place,

then it seems to me decidedly inconvenient that the gun was never found.'

The DA hammered at him for two days. He re-read the Handy-Pik clerk's

testimony about the dishtowels to Andy. Andy repeated that he could not

recall buying them, but admitted that he also couldn't remember not buying

them.

Was it true that Andy and Linda Dufresne had taken out a joint insurance

policy in early 1947? Yes, that was true. And if acquitted, wasn't it true that

Andy stood to gain $50,000 in benefits? True. And wasn't it true that he had

gone up to Glenn Quentin's house with murder in his heart, and wasn't it

also true that he had indeed committed murder twice over? No, it was not

true. Then what did he think had happened, since there had been no signs of

robbery?

'I have no way of knowing that, sir,' Andy said quietly.

The case went to the jury at one p. m. on a snowy Wednesday afternoon.

The twelve jurymen and women came back at three-thirty. The bailiff said

they would have been back earlier, but they had held off in order to enjoy a

nice chicken dinner from Bentley's Restaurant at the county's expense. They

found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would

have done the airdance before that spring's crocuses poked their heads out

of the dirt.

The DA had asked him what he thought had happened, and Andy slipped

the question -but he did have an idea, and I got it out of him late one

evening in 1955. It had taken those seven years for us to progress from

nodding acquaintances to fairly close friends -but I never felt really close to

Andy until 1960 or so, and I believe I was the only one who ever did get

really close to him. Both being long-timers, we were in the same cellblock

from beginning to end, although I was halfway down the corridor from him.

'What do I think?' He laughed-but there was no humour in the sound. 'I

think there was a lot of bad luck floating around that night. More than could

ever get together in the same short span of time again. I think it must have

been some stranger, just passing through. Maybe someone who had a flat

tire on that road after I went home. Maybe a burglar. Maybe a psychopath.

He killed them, that's all. And I'm here.'

As simple as that. And he was condemned to spend the rest of his life in

Shawshank-or the part of it that mattered. Five years later he began to have

parole hearings, and he was turned down just as regular as clockwork in

spite of being a model prisoner. Getting a pass out of Shawshank when

you've got murder stamped on your admittance-slip is slow work, as slow

as a river eroding a rock. Seven men sit on the board, two more than at most

state prisons, and every one of those seven has an ass as hard as the water

drawn up from a mineral-spring well You can't buy those guys, you can't

no, you can't cry for them. As far as the board concerned, money don't talk,

and nobody walks. For other reasons in Andy's case as well but that

belongs a little further along in my story. There was a trustee, name of

Kendricks, who was into me for some pretty heavy money back in the

fifties, and it was four years before he got it all paid off. Most of the interest

he paid me was information-in my line of work, you're dead if you can't

find ways of keeping your ear to the ground. This Kendricks, for instance,

had access to records I was never going to see running a stamper down in

the goddam plate-shop. Kendricks told me that the parole board vote was 7-

0 against Andy Dufresne through 1957, 6-1 in '58, 7-0 again in '59, and 5-2

in '60. After that I don't know, but I do know that sixteen years later he was

still in Cell 14 of Cellblock

5. By tben, 1976, he was fifty-eight. They probably would have gotten

big-hearted and let him out around 1983. They give you fife, and that's what

they take-all of it that counts, anyway. Maybe they set you loose someday,

but well, Listen: I knew this guy, Sherwood Bolton, his name was, and he

had this pigeon in his cell. From 1945 until 1953, when they let him out, he

had that pigeon. He wasn't any Birdman of Alcatraz; he just had this pigeon.

Jake, he called him. He set Jake free a day before he, Sherwood, that is, was

to walk, and Jake flew away just as pretty as you could want. But about a

week after Sherwood Bolton left our happy little family, a friend of mine

called me over to the west corner of the exercise yard, where Sherwood

used to hang out, and my friend said: 'Isn't that Jake, Red?' It was. That

pigeon was just as dead as a turd.

I remember the first time Andy Dufresne got in touch with me for

something; I remember like it was yesterday. That wasn't the time he

wanted Rita Hayworth, though. That came later. In that summer of 1948 he

came around for something else. Most of my deals are done right there in

the exercise yard, and that's where this one went down. Our yard is big,

much bigger than most. It's a perfect square, ninety yards on a side. The

north side is the outer wall, with a guardtower at either end. The guards up

there are armed with binoculars and riot guns. The main gate is in that north

side. The truck loading-bays are on the south side of the yard. There are

five of them. Shawshank is a busy place during the work-week-deliveries

in, deliveries out. We have the license-plate factory, and a big industrial

laundry that does all the prison wetwash, plus that of Kittery Receiving

Hospital and the Eliot Sanatorium. There's also a big automotive garage

where mechanic inmates fix prison, state, and municipal vehicles-not to

mention the private cars of the screws, the administration officers and, on

more than one occasion, those of the parole board.

The east side is a thick stone wall full of tiny slit windows. Cellblock 5 is

on the other side of that wail. The west side is Administration and the

infirmary. Shawshank has never been as overcrowded as most prisons, and

back in '48 it was only filled to something like two-thirds capacity, but at

any given time there might be eighty to a hundred and twenty cons on the

yard-playing toss with a football or a baseball, shooting craps, jawing at

each other, making deals. On Sunday the place was even more crowded; on

Sunday the place would have looked like a country holiday if there had

been any women.

It was on a Sunday that Andy first came to me. I had just finished talking

to Elmore Armitage, a fellow who often came in handy to me, about a radio

when Andy walked up.

I knew who he was, of course; he had a reputation for being a snob and a

cold

fish.

People were saying he was marked for trouble already. One of the people

saying so was Bogs Dismond, a bad man to have on your case. Andy had no

cellmate, and I'd heard that was just the way he wanted it, although the one-

man cells in Cellblock 5 were only a little bigger than coffins. But I don't

have to listen to rumours about a man when I can judge him for myself.

'Hello,' he said. 'I'm Andy Dufresne.' He offered his hand and I shook it.

He wasn't a man to waste time being social; he got right to the point. 'I

understand that you're a man who knows how to get things.'

I agreed that I was able to locate certain items from time to time, 'How do

you do that?' Andy asked.

'Sometimes,' I said, 'things just seem to come into my hand. I can't

explain it. Unless it's because I'm Irish.'

He smiled a little at that. 'I wonder if you could get me a rock hammer.'

'What would that be, and why would you want it?'

Andy looked surprised. 'Do you make motivations a part of your

business?' With words like those I could understand how he had gotten a

reputation for being the snobby sort, the kind of guy who likes to put on

airs-but I sensed a tiny thread of humour in his question.

I'll tell you,' I said. 'If you wanted a toothbrush, I wouldn't ask questions.

I'd just quote you a price. Because a toothbrush, you see, is a non-lethal sort

of a weapon.'

"You have strong feelings about lethal weapons?'

'I do.'

An old friction-taped baseball flew towards us and he turned, cat-quick,

and picked it out of the air. It was a move Frank Malzone would have been

proud of. Andy flicked the bail back to where it had come from -just a

quick and easy-looking flick of the wrist, but that throw had some mustard

on it, just the same. I could see a lot of people were watching us with one

eye as they went about their business. Probably the guards in tile tower

were watching, too. I won't gild the lily; there are cons that swing weight in

any prison, maybe four or five in a small one, maybe two or three dozen in

a big one. At Shawshank I was one of those with some weight, and what I

thought of Andy Dufresne would have a lot to do with how his time went.

He probably knew it too, but he wasn't kowtowing or sucking up to me, and

I respected him for that.

'Fair enough. Ill tell you what it is and why I want it A rock-hammer

looks like a miniature pickaxe-about so long.' He held his hands about a

foot apart, and that was when I first noticed how neatly kept his nails were.

'It's got a small sharp pick on one end and a fiat, blunt hammerhead on the

other. I want it because I like rocks.'

'Rocks,' I said.

'Squat down here a minute,' he said.

I humoured him. We hunkered down on our haunches like Indians. Andy

took a handful of exercise yard dirt and began to sift it between his neat

hands, so it emerged in a fine cloud. Small pebbles were left over, one or

two sparkly, the rest dull and plain. One of the dull ones was quartz, but it

was only dull until you'd rubbed it clean. Then it had a nice milky glow.

Andy did the cleaning and then tossed it to me. I caught it and named it.

'Quartz, sure,' he said, 'And look. Mica. Shale, silted granite. Here's a

piece of graded limestone, from when they cut this place out of the side of

the hill.' He tossed them away and dusted his hands. 'I'm a rockhound. At

least I was a rockhound. In my old life. I'd like to be one again, on a

limited scale.'

'Sunday expeditions in the exercise yard?' I asked, standing up. It was a

silly idea, and yet seeing that little piece of quartz had given my heart a

funny tweak. I don't know exactly why; just an association with the outside

world, I suppose. You didn't think of such things in terms of the yard.

Quartz was something you picked out of a small, quick-running stream.

'Better to have Sunday expeditions here than no Sunday expeditions at

all,' he said. 'You could plant an item like that rock-hammer in somebody's

skull,' I remarked. 'I have no enemies here,' he said quietly. 'No?' I smiled.

'Wait awhile.'

'If there's trouble, I can handle it without using a rock-hammer.'

'Maybe you want to try an escape? Going under the wall? Because if you

do -' He laughed politely. When I saw the rock-hammer three weeks later, I

understood why. "You know,' I said, 'if anyone sees you with it, they'll take

it away. If they saw

you with a spoon, they'd take it away. What you going to do, just sit

down here in the yard and tap away?' 'Oh, I believe I can do a lot better than

that.'

I nodded. That part of it really wasn't my business, anyway. A man

engages my services to get him something. Whether he can keep it or not

after I get it is his business. 'How much would an item like that go for?' I

asked. I was beginning to enjoy his quiet, low-key style. When you've spent

ten years in stir, as I had then, you can get awfully tired of the bellowers

and the braggarts and the loud-mouths. Yes, I think it would be fair to say I

liked Andy from the first.

'Eight dollars in any rock-and-gem shop,' he said, 'but I realize that in a

business like yours you work on a cost-plus basis-'

'Cost plus ten per cent is my going rate, but I have to go up some on a

dangerous item. For something like the gadget you're talking about, it takes

a little more goose-grease to get the wheels turning. Let's say ten dollars.'

'Ten it is'

I looked at him, smiling a little. 'Have you got ten dollars?'

'I do,' he said quietly.

A long time after, I discovered that he had better than five hundred. He

had brought it in with him. When they check you in at this hotel, one of the

bellhops is obliged to bend you over and take a look up your works-but

there are a lot of works, and, not to put too fine a point on it, a man who is

really determined can get a fairly large item quite a ways up them-far

enough to be out of sight, unless the bellhop you happen to draw is in the

mood to pull on a rubber glove and go prospecting.

That's fine,' I said. 'You ought to know what I expect if you get caught

with what I get you.'

'I suppose I should,' he said, and I could tell by the slight change in his

grey eyes that he knew exactly what I was going to say. It was a slight

lightening, a gleam of his special ironic humour.

'If you get caught, you'll say you found it. That's about the long and short

of it. They'll put you in solitary for three or four weeks plus, of course,

you'll lose your toy and you'll get a black mark on your record. If you give

them my name, you and I will never do business again. Not for so much as

a pair of shoelaces or a bag of Bugler. And I'll send some fellows around to

lump you up. I don't like violence, but you'll understand my position. I can't

allow it to get around that I can't handle myself. That would surely finish

me.'

'Yes. I suppose it would, I understand, and you don't need to worry.'

'I never worry,' I said. 'In a place like this there's no percentage in it.'

He nodded and walked away. Three days later he walked up beside me in

the exercise yard during the laundry's morning break. He didn't speak or

even look my way, but pressed a picture of the Hon. Alexander Hamilton

into my hand as neatly as a good magician does a card-trick. He was a man

who adapted fast. I got him his rock-hammer. I had it in my cell for one

night, and it was just as he described it It was no tool for escape (it would

have taken a man just about six hundred years to tunnel under the wall

using that rock-hammer, I figured), but I still felt some misgivings. If you

planted that pickaxe end in a man's head, he would surely never listen to

Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio again. And Andy had already begun

having trouble with the sisters. I hoped it wasn't them he was wanting the

rock-hammer for.

In the end, I trusted my judgment. Early the next morning, twenty

minutes before the wake-up horn went off, I slipped the rock-hammer and a

package of Camels to Ernie, the old trusty who swept the Cellblock 5

corridors until he was let

free in 1956. He slipped it into his tunic without a word, and I didn't see

the rock-hammer again for seven years.

The following Sunday Andy walked over to me in the exercise yard

again. He was nothing to look at that day, I can tell you. His lower lip was

swelled up so big it looked like a summer sausage, his right eye was

swollen half-shut, and there was an ugly washboard scrape across one

cheek. He was having his troubles with the sisters, all right, but he never

mentioned them. 'Thanks for the tool,' he said, and walked away.

I watched him curiously. He walked a few steps, saw in the dirt, bent

over, and picked it up. It was a small rock. Prison fatigues, except for those

worn by mechanics when they're on the job, have no pockets. But there are

ways to get around that. The little pebble disappeared up Andy's sleeve and

didn't come down. I admired that and I admired him.

In spite of the problems he was having, he was going on with his life.

There are thousands who don't or won't or can't, and plenty of them aren't in

prison, either. And I noticed that, although his face still looked as if a

twister had happened to it, his hands were still neat and clean, the nails

well-kept.

I didn't see much of him over the next six months; Andy spent a lot of

that time in solitary.

A few words about the sisters.

In a lot of pens they are known as bull queers or jailhouse susies-just

lately the term in fashion is 'killer queens'. But in Shawshank they were

always the sisters. I don't know why, but other than the name I guess there

was no difference.

It comes as no surprise to most these days that there's a lot of buggery

going on inside the walls-except to some of the new fish, maybe, who have

the misfortune to be young, slim, good-looking, and unwary-but

homosexuality, like straight sex, comes in a hundred different shapes and

forms. There are men who can't stand to be without sex of some kind and

turn to another man to keep from going crazy. Usually what follows is an

arrangement between two fundamentally "Heterosexual men, although I've

sometimes wondered if they are quite as heterosexual as they thought they

were going to be when they get back to their wives or their girlfriends.

There are also men who get 'turned' in prison. In the current parlance they

'go gay', or 'come out of the closet'. Mostly (but not always) they play the

female, and their favours are competed for fiercely.

And then there are the sisters.

They are to prison society what the rapist is to the society outside the

walls. They're usually long-timers, doing hard bullets for brutal crimes.

Their prey is the young, the weak, and the inexperienced or, as in the case

of Andy Dufresne, the weak-looking.

Their hunting grounds are the showers, the cramped, tunnel-like area way

behind the industrial washers in the laundry, sometimes the infirmary. On

more than one occasion rape has occurred in the closet-sized projection

booth behind the auditorium. Most often what the sisters take by force they

could have had for free, if they wanted it; those who have been turned

always seem to have 'crushes' on one sister or another, like teenage girls

with their Sinatras, Presleys, or Redfords. But for the sisters, the joy has

always been in taking it by force and I guess it always will be.

Because of his small size and fair good looks (and maybe also because of

that very quality of self-possession I had admired), the sisters were after

Andy from the day he walked in. If this was some kind of fairy story, I'd tell

you that Andy fought the good fight until they left him alone. I wish I could

say that, but I can't. Prison is no fairy-tale world.

The first time for him was in the shower less than three days after he

joined our happy Shawshank family. Just a lot of slap and tickle that time, I

understand. They like to size you up before they make their real move, like

jackals finding out if the prey is as weak and hamstrung as it looks.

Andy punched back and bloodied the lip of a big, hulking sister named

Bogs Diamond-gone these many years since to who knows where. A guard

broke it up before it could go any further, but Bogs promised to get him-and

Bogs did.

The second time was behind the washers in the laundry. A lot has gone

on in that long, dusty, and narrow space over the years; the guards know

about it and just let it be. It's dim and littered with bags of washing and

bleaching compound, drums of Hexlite catalyst, as harmless as salt if your

hands are dry, murderous as battery acid if they're wet. The guards don't like

to go back there. There's no room to manoeuvre, and one of the first things

they teach them when they come to work in a place like this is to never let

the cons get you in a place where you can't back up.

Bogs wasn't there that day, but Henry Backus, who had been washroom

foreman down there since 1922, told me that four of his friends were. Andy

held them at bay for a while with a scoop of Hexlite, threatening to throw it

in their eyes if they came any closer, but he tripped trying to back around

one of the big Washex four-pockets. That was all it took.

They were on him.

I guess the phrase gang-rape is one that doesn't change much from one

generation to the next. That's what they did to him, those four sisters. They

bent him over a gearbox and one of them held a Phillips screwdriver to his

temple while they gave him the business. It rips you up some, but not bad-

am I speaking from personal experience, you ask?-I only wish I weren't.

You bleed for a while. If you don't want some clown asking you if you just

started your period, you wad up a bunch of toilet paper and keep it down

the back of your underwear until it stops. The bleeding really is like a

menstrual flow; it keeps up for two, maybe three days, a slow trickle. Then

it stops. No harm done, unless they've done something even more unnatural

to you. No physical harm done-but rape is rape, and eventually you have to

look at your face in the mirror again and decide what to make of yourself.

Andy went through that alone, the way he went through everything alone

in those days.

He must have come to the conclusion that others before him had come to,

namely, that there are only two ways to deal with the sisters: fight them and

get taken, or just get taken.

He decided to fight. When Bogs and two of his buddies came after him a

week or so after the laundry incident ('I heard ya got broke in,' Bogs said,

according to Ernie, who was around at the time), Andy slugged it out with

them. He broke the nose of a fellow named Rooster MacBride, a heavy-

gutted farmer who was in for beating his step-daughter to death. Rooster

died in here, I'm happy to add.

They took him, all three of them. When it was done, Rooster and the

other egg-it might have been Pete Verness, but I'm not completely sure-

forced Andy down to his knees.

Bogs Diamond stepped in front of him. He had a pearl-handled razor in

those days with the words Diamond Pearl engraved on both sides of the

grip. He opened it and said, I'm gonna open my fly now, mister man, and

you're going to swallow what I give you to swallow. And when you done

swallowed mine, you're gonna swallow Rooster's. I guess you done broke

his nose and I think he ought to have something to pay for it'

Andy said, 'Anything of yours that you stick in my mouth, you're going

to lose

it.'

Bogs looked at Andy like he was crazy, Ernie said.

'No,' he told Andy, talking to him slowly, like Andy was a stupid kid.

'You didn't understand what I said. You do anything like that and I'll put all

eight inches of this steel into your ear. Get it?'

'I understand what you said. I don't think you understand me. I'm going to

bite whatever you stick into my mouth. You can put that razor in my brain, I

guess, but you should know that a sudden serious brain injury causes the

victim to simultaneously urinate, defecate and bite down.'

He looked up at Bogs, smiling that little smile of his, old Ernie said, as if

the three of them had been discussing stocks and bonds with him instead of

throwing it to him just as hard as they could. Just as if he was wearing one

of his three-piece bankers' suits instead of kneeling on a dirty broom-closet

floor with his pants around his ankles and blood trickling down the insides

of his thighs.

'In fact,' he went on, 'I understand that the bite-reflex is sometimes so

strong that the victim's jaws have to be pried open with a crowbar or a

jackhandle.'

Bogs didn't put anything in Andy's mouth that night in late February of

1948, and neither did Rooster MacBride, and so far as I know, no one else

ever did, either. What the three of them did was to beat Andy within an inch

of his life, and all four of them ended up doing a jolt in solitary. Andy and

Rooster MacBride went by way of the infirmary.

How many times did that particular crew have at him? I don't know. I

think Rooster lost his taste fairly early on -being in nose-splints for a month

can do that to a fellow -and Bogs Diamond left off that summer, all at once.

That was a strange thing. Bogs was found in his cell, badly beaten, one

morning in early June, when he didn't show up in the breakfast nose-count

He wouldn't say who had done it, or how they had gotten to him, but being

in my business, I know that a screw can be bribed to do almost anything

except get a gun for an inmate. They didn't make big salaries then, and they

don't now. And in those days there was no electronic locking system, no

closed-circuit TV, no master-switches which controlled whole areas of the

prison. Back in 1948, each cellblock had its own turnkey. A guard could

have been bribed real easy to let someone-maybe two or three someones-

into the block, and, yes, even into Diamond's cell.

Of course a job like that would have cost a lot of money. Not by outside

standards, no.

Prison economics are on a smaller scale. When you've been in here a

while, a dollar bill in your hand looks like a twenty did outside. My guess

is, that if Bogs was done, it cost someone a serious piece of change-fifteen

bucks, well say, for the turnkey, and two or store apiece for each of the

lump-up guys.

I'm not saying it was Andy Dufresne, but I do know that he brought in

five hundred dollars when he came, and he was a banker in the straight

world- a man who understands better than the rest of us the ways in which

money can become power.

And I know this: After the beating-the three broken ribs, the

haemorrhaged eye, the sprained back and the dislocated hip-Bogs Diamond

left Andy alone. In fact, after that he left everyone pretty much alone. He

got to be like a high wind in the summertime, all bluster and no bite. You

could say, in fact, that he turned into a 'weak sister'.

That was the end of Bogs Diamond, a man who might eventually have

killed Andy if Andy hadn't taken steps to prevent it (if it was him who took

the steps). But it

wasn't the end of Andy's trouble with the sisters. There was a little hiatus,

and then it began again, although not so hard nor so often. Jackals like easy

prey, and there were easier pickings around than Andy Dufresne.

He always fought them, that's what I remember. He knew, I guess, that if

you let them have at you even once, without fighting it, it got that much

easier to let them have their way without fighting next time. So Andy would

turn up with bruises on his face every once in a while, and there was the

matter of the two broken fingers six or eight months after Diamond's

beating. Oh yes-and sometime in late 1949, the man landed in the infirmary

with a broken cheekbone that was probably the result of someone swinging

a nice chunk of pipe with the business-end wrapped in flannel. He always

fought back, and as a result, he did his time in solitary. But don't think

solitary was the hardship for Andy that it was for some men. He got along

with himself.

The sisters was something he adjusted himself to-and then, in 1950, it

stopped almost completely. That is a part of my story that I'll get to in due

time.

In the fall of 1948, Andy met me one morning in the exercise yard and

asked me if I could get him half a dozen rock-blankets.

'What the hell are those?' I asked.

He told me that was just what rockhounds called them; they were

polishing cloths about the size of dishtowels. They were heavily padded,

with a smooth side and a rough side-the smooth side like fine-grained

sandpaper, the rough side almost as abrasive as industrial steel wool (Andy

also kept a box of that in his cell, although he didn't get it from me-I

imagine he kited it from the prison laundry).

I told him I thought we could do business on those, and I ended up

getting them from the very same rock-and-gem shop where I'd arranged to

get the rock-hammer. This time I charged Andy my usual ten per cent and

not a penny more. I didn't see anything lethal or even dangerous in a dozen

7" x 7" squares of padded cloth. Rock-blankets, indeed.

It was about five months later that Andy asked if I could get him Rita

Hayworth. That conversation took place in the auditorium, during a movie-

show. Nowadays we get the movie-shows once or twice a week, but back

then the shows were a monthly event. Usually the movies we got had a

morally uplifting message to them, and this one, The Lost Weekend, was no

different. The moral was that it's dangerous to drink. It was a moral we

could take some comfort in.

Andy manoeuvred to get next to me, and about halfway through the show

he leaned a little closer and asked if I could get him Rita Hayworth. I'll tell

you the truth, it kind of tickled me. He was usually cool, calm, and

collected, but that night he was jumpy as hell, almost embarrassed, as if he

was asking me to get him a load of Trojans or one of those sheepskin-lined

gadgets that are supposed to 'enhance your solitary pleasure,' as the

magazines put it. He seemed overcharged, a man on the verge of blowing

his radiator.

'I can get her,' I said. 'No sweat, calm down. You want the big one or the

little one?' At that time Rita was my best girl (a few years before it had been

Betty Grable) and she came in two sizes. For a buck you could get the little

Rita. For two-fifty you could have the big Rita, four feet high and all

woman.

'The big one,' he said, not looking at me. I tell you, he was a hot sketch

that night He was blushing just like a kid trying to get into a kootch show

with his big brother's draft-card.

'Can you do it?'

'Take it easy, sure I can. Does a bear shit in the woods?' The audience

was applauding and catcalling as the bugs came out of the walls to get Ray

Milland, who was having a bad case of the DT's.

'How soon?'

'A week. Maybe less.'

'Okay.' But he sounded disappointed, as if he had been hoping I had one

stuffed down my pants right then. 'How much?"

I quoted him the wholesale price. I could afford to give him this one at

cost; he'd been a good customer, what with his rock-hammer and his rock-

blankets. Furthermore, he'd been a good boy-on more than one night when

he was having his problems with Bogs, Rooster, and the rest, I wondered

how long it would be before he used the rock-hammer to crack someone's

head open.

Posters are a big part of my business, just behind the booze and

cigarettes, usually half a step ahead of the reefer. In the 60s the business

exploded in every direction, with a lot of people wanting funky hang-ups

like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, that Easy Rider poster. But mostly it's girls;

one pinup queen after another.

A few days after I spoke to Ernie, a laundry driver I did business with

back then brought in better than sixty posters, most of them Rita

Hayworths. You may even remember the picture; I sure do. Rita is dressed-

sort of- in a bathing suit, one hand behind her head, her eyes half closed,

those full, sulky red lips parted. They called it Rita Hayworth, but they

might as well have called it Woman in Heat.

The prison administration knows about the black market, in case you

were wondering. Sure they do. They probably know as much about my

business as I do myself. They live with it because they know that a prison is

like a big pressure cooker, and there have to be vents somewhere to let off

steam. They make the occasional bust, and I've done time in solitary a time

or three over the years, but when it's something like posters, they wink.

Live and let live. And when a big Rita Hayworth went up in some fishie's

cell, the assumption was that it came in the mail from a friend or a relative.

Of course all the care-packages from friends and relatives are opened and

the contents inventoried, but who goes back and re-checks the inventory

sheets for something as harmless as a Rita Hayworth or an Ava Gardner

pin-up? When you're in a pressure-cooker you learn to live and let live or

somebody will carve you a brand-new mouth just above the Adam's apple.

You learn to make allowances.

It was Ernie again who took the poster up to Andy's cell, 14, my own, 6.

And it was Ernie who brought back the written in Andy's careful hand, just

one word: Thanks.' A little while later, as they filed us out for morning

chow, I glanced into his ceil and saw Rita over his bunk in all her

swimsuited glory, one hand behind her head, her eyes half-closed, those

soft, satiny lips parted. It was over his bunk when he could look at her

nights, after lights out, in the glow of the arc sodiums in the exercise yard.

But in the bright morning sunlight, there were dark slashes across her face-

the shadow of the bars on his single slit-window.

Now I'm going to tell you what happened in mid-May of 1950 that

finally ended Andy's three-year series of skirmishes with the sisters. It was

also the incident which eventually got him out of the laundry and into the

library, where he filled out his work-time until he left our happy little

family earlier this year.

You may have noticed now much of what I've told you already is

hearsay-someone saw something and told me and I told you. Well, in some

cases I've simplified it even more than it really was, and have actually

repeated (or will repeat) fourth- or fifth-hand information. That's the way it

is here. The grapevine is very real, and you have to use it if you're going to

stay ahead. Also, of course, you have to know

how to pick out the grains of truth from the chaff of lies, rumours, and

wish-it-had-beens. You may also have gotten the idea that I'm describing

someone who's more legend than man, and I would have to agree that

there's some truth to that. To us long-timers who knew Andy over a space of

years, there was an element of fantasy to him, a sense, almost, of myth-

magic, if you get what I mean. That story I passed on about Andy refusing

to give Bogs Diamond a head-job is part of that myth, and how he kept on

fighting the sisters is part of it, and how he got the library job is part of it,

too but with one important difference: I was there and I saw what

happened, and I swear on my mother's name that it's all true. The oath of a

convicted murderer may not be worth much, but believe this: I don't lie.

Andy and I were on fair speaking terms by then. The guy fascinated me.

Looking back to the poster episode, I see there's one thing I neglected to tell

you, and maybe I should.

Five weeks after he hung Rita up (I'd forgotten all about it by then, and

had gone on to other deals), Ernie passed a small white box through the bars

of my cell.

'From Dufresne,' he said, low, and never missed a stroke with his push-

broom.

Thanks, Ernie,' I said, and slipped him half a pack of Camels.

Now what the hell was this, I was wondering as I slipped the cover from

the box. There was a lot of white cotton inside, and below that

I looked for a long time. For a few minutes it was like I didn't even dare

touch them, they were so pretty. There's a crying shortage of pretty things in

the slam, and the real pity of it is that a lot of men don't even seem to miss

them.

There were two pieces of quartz in that box, both of them carefully

polished. They had been chipped into driftwood shapes. There were little

sparkles of iron pyrites in them like flecks of gold. If they hadn't been so

heavy, they would have served as a fine pair of men's cufflinks-they were

that close to being a matched set How much work went into creating those

two pieces? Hours and hours after lights out, I knew that first the chipping

and shaping, and then the almost endless polishing and finishing with those

rock-blankets. Looking at them, I felt the warmth that any man or woman

feels when he or she is looking at something pretty, something that has been

worked and made-that's the thing that really separates us from the animals, I

think-and I felt something else, too. A sense of awe for the man's brute

persistence. But I never knew just how persistent Andy Dufresne could be

until much later.

In May of 1950, the powers that be decided that the roof of the licence-

plate factory ought to be resurfaced with roofing tar. They wanted it done

before it got too hot up there, and they sued for volunteers for the work,

which was planned to take about a week.

More than seventy men spoke up, because it was outside work and May

is one damn fine month for outside work. Nine or ten names were drawn

out of a hat, and two of them happened to be Andy's and my own.

For the next week we'd be marched out to the exercise yard after

breakfast, with two guards up front and two more behind plus all the

guards in the towers keeping a weather eye on the proceedings through their

field-glasses for good measure.

Four of us would be carrying a big extension ladder on those morning

marches -I always got a kick out of the way Dickie Betts, who was on that

job, called that sort of ladder an extensible-and we'd put it up against the

side of that low, lit building. Then we'd start bucket-brigading hot buckets

of tar up to the roof. Spill that shit on you and you'd jitterbug all the way to

the infirmary.

There were six guards on the project, all of them picked on the basis of

seniority. It was almost as good as a week's vacation, because instead of

sweating it out in the laundry or the plate-shop or standing over a bunch of

cons cutting pulp or brush somewhere out in the willy wags, they were

having a regular May holiday in the sun, just sitting there with their backs

up against the low parapet, shooting the bull back and forth.

They didn't even have to keep more than half an eye on us, because the

south wall sentry post was close enough so that the fellows up there could

have spit their chews on us, if they'd wanted to. If anyone on the roof-

sealing party had made one funny move, it would take four seconds to cut

him smack in two with.45 calibre machine-gun bullets. So those screws just

sat there and took their ease. All they needed was a couple of six-packs

buried in crushed ice, and they would have been the lords of all creation.

One of them was a fellow named Byron Hadley, and in that year of 1950,

he'd been at Shawshank longer than I had. Longer than the last two wardens

put together, as a matter of fact. The fellow running the show in 1950 was a

prissy-looking downcast Yankee named George Dunahy. He had a degree in

penal administration. No one liked him, as far as I could tell, except the

people who had gotten him his appointment. I heard that he wasn't

interested in anything but compiling statistics for a book (which was later

published by a small New England outfit called Light Side Press, where he

probably had to pay to have it done), who won the intramural baseball

championship each September, and getting a death-penalty law passed in

Maine. A regular bear for the death-penalty was George Dunahy. He was

fired off the job in 1953, when it came out he was running a discount auto

repair service down in the prison garage and splitting the profits with Byron

Hadley and Greg Stammas. Hadley and Stammas came out of that one

okay-they were old hands at keeping their asses covered-but Dunahy took a

walk. No one was sorry to see him go, but nobody was exactly pleased to

see Greg Stammas step into his shoes, either. He was a short man with a

tight, hard gut and the coldest brown eyes you ever saw. He always had a

painful, pursed little grin on his face, as if he had to go to the bathroom and

couldn't quite manage it. During Stammas's tenure as warden there was a lot

of brutality at Shawshank, and although I have no proof, I believe there

were maybe half a dozen moonlight burials in the stand of scrub forest that

lies east of the prison. Dunahy was bad, but Greg Stammas was a cruel,

wretched, cold-hearted man. He and Byron Hadley were good friends. As

warden, George Dunahy was nothing but a posturing figurehead; it was

Stammas, and through him, Hadley, who actually administered the prison.

Hadley was a tall, shambling man with thinning red hair. He sunburned

easily and he talked loud and if you didn't move fast enough to suit him,

he'd clout you with his stick. On that day, our third on the roof, he was

talking to another guard named Mert Entwhistle.

Hadley had gotten some amazingly good news, so he was griping about it.

That was his style-he was a thankless man with not a good word for anyone,

a man who was convinced that the whole world was against him. The world

had cheated him out of the best years of his life, and the world would be

more than happy to cheat him out of the rest. I have seen some screws that I

thought were almost saintly, and I think I know why that happens-they are

able to see the difference between their own lives, poor and struggling as

they might be, and the lives of the men they are paid by the state to watch

over. These guards are able to formulate a comparison concerning pain.

Others can't, or won't.

For Byron Hadley there was no basis of comparison. He could sit there,

cool and at his ease under the warm May sun and find the gall to mourn his

own good luck while less than ten feet away a bunch of men were working

and sweating and burning their hands on great big buckets filled with

bubbling tar, men who had to work so hard in their ordinary round of days

that this looked like a respite. You may remember the old question, the one

that's supposed to define your outlook on life when you answer it. For

Byron Hadley the answer would always be half empty, the glass is half

empty. Forever and ever, amen. If you gave him a cool drink of apple cider,

he'd think about vinegar. If you told him his wife had always been faithful

to him, he'd tell you it was because she was so damn ugly. So there he sat,

talking to Mert Entwhistle loud enough for all of us to hear, his broad white

forehead already starting to redden with the sun. He had one hand thrown

back over the low parapet surrounding the roof. The other was on the butt

of his.38. We all got the story along with Mert. It seemed that Hadley's

older brother had gone off to Texas some fourteen years ago and the rest of

the family hadn't heard from the son of a bitch since. They had all assumed

he was dead, and good riddance. Then, a week and a half ago, a lawyer had

called them longdistance from Austin. It seemed that Hadley's brother had

died four months ago, and a rich man at that ('It's frigging incredible how

lucky some assholes can get,' this paragon of gratitude on the plate-shop

roof said). The money had come as a result of oil and oil-leases, and there

was close to a million dollars. No, Hadley wasn't a millionaire-that might

have made even him happy, at least for a while-but the brother had left a

pretty damned decent bequest of thirty-five thousand dollars to each

surviving member of his family back in Maine, if they could be found. Not

bad. Like getting lucky and winning a sweepstakes.

But to Byron Hadley the glass was always half-empty. He spent most of

the morning bitching to Mert about the bite that the goddam government

was going to take out of his windfall. "They'll leave me about enough to

buy a new car with,' he allowed, 'and then what happens? You have to pay

the damn taxes on the car, and the repairs and maintenance, you get your

goddam kids pestering you to take 'em for a ride with the top down -'

'And to drive it, if they're old enough,' Mert said. Old Mert Entwhistle

knew which side his bread was buttered on, and he didn't say what must

have been as obvious to him as to the rest of us: If that money's worrying

you so bad, Byron old kid old sock, I'll just take it off your hands. After all,

what are friends for?

That's right, wanting to drive it, wanting to learn to drive on it, for

Chrissake, ' Byron said with a shudder. 'Then what happens at the end of the

year? If you figured the tax wrong and you don't have enough left over to

pay the overdraft, you got to pay out of your own pocket, or maybe even

borrow it from one of those kikey loan agencies. And they audit you

anyway, you know. It don't matter. And when the government audits you,

they always take more. Who can fight Uncle Sam? He puts his hand inside

your shirt and squeezes your tit until it's purple, and you end up getting the

short end. Christ.' He lapsed into a morose silence, thinking of what terrible

bad luck he'd had to inherit that $35,000. Andy Dufresne had been

spreading tar with a big Padd brush less than fifteen feet away and now he

tossed it into his pail and walked over to where Mert and Hadley were

sitting.

We all tightened up, and I saw one of the other screws, Tim Youngblood,

drag his hand down to where his pistol was bolstered. One of the fellows in

the sentry tower struck his partner on the arm and they both turned, too. For

one moment I thought Andy was going to get shot, or clubbed, or Then he

said, very softly, to Hadley: 'Do you trust your wife?' Hadley just stared at

him. He was starting to get red in the face, and I knew that was a bad sign.

In about three seconds he as going to pull his billy and give Andy the butt

end of it right in the solar plexus, where that big bundle of nerves is. A hard

enough hit there can kill you, but they always go for it. If itdoesn't kill you

it will paralyze you long enough to forget whatever cute move it was that

you had planned.

"Boy," Hadley said, 'I'll give you just one chance to pick up that Padd.

And then you're goin' off this roof on your head.'

Andy just looked at him, very calm and still. His eyes were like ice. It

was as if he hadn't heard. And I found myself wanting to tell him how it

was, to give him the crash course.

The crash course is you never let on that you hear the guards talking, you

never try to horn in on their conversation unless you're asked (and then you

always tell them just what they wanting to hear and shut up again). Black

man, white man, red man., yellow man, in prison it doesn't matter because

we've got our own brand of equality. In prison every con's a nigger and you

have to get used to the idea if you intend to survive men like Hadley and

Greg Staminas, who really would kill you. just as soon as look at you.

When you're in stir you belong to the state and if you forget it, woe is you.

I've known men who've lost eyes, men who've lost toes and fingers; I knew

one man who lost the tip of his penis and counted himself lucky that was all

he lost. I wanted to tell Andy that it was already too late. He could go back

and pick up his brush and there would still be some big lug waiting for him

in the showers that night, ready to charlie-horse both of his legs and leave

him writhing on the cement. You could buy a lug like rat for a pack of

cigarettes or three Baby Ruths. Most of all, I wanted to tell him not to make

it any worse than it already was.

What I did was to keep on running tar onto the roof as if nothing at all

was happening.

Like everyone else, I look after my own ass first. I have to. It's cracked

already, and in Shawshank there have always been Hadleys wiling to finish

the job of breaking it.

Andy said, 'Maybe I put it wrong. Whether you trust her or not is

immaterial. The problem is whether or not you believe she would ever go

behind your back, try to hamstring you.'

Hadley got up. Mert got up. Tim Youngblood got up. Hadley's face was

as red as the side of a firebarn. 'Your only, problem,' he said, 'is going to be

how many bones you still get unbroken. You can count them in the

infirmary. Come on, Mert We're throwing this sucker over the side.'

Tim Youngblood drew his gun. The rest of us kept tarring like mad. The

sun beat down.

They were going to do it; Hadley and Mert were simply going to pitch

him over the side.

Terrible accident Dufresne, prisoner 81433-SHNK, was taking a couple

of empties down and slipped on the ladder. Too bad.

They laid hold of him, Mert on the right arm, Hadley on the left. Andy

didn't resist. His eyes never left Hadley's red, horsey face.

'If you've got your thumb on her, Mr Hadley,' he said in that same calm,

composed voice, 'there's not a reason why you shouldn't have every cent of

that money. Final score, Mr Byron Hadley thirty-five thousand, Uncle Sam

zip.'

Mert started to drag him towards the edge. Hadley just stood still. For a

moment Andy was like a rope between them in a tug-of-war game. Then

Hadley said, 'Hold on one second, Mert. What do you mean, boy?'

'I mean, if you've got your thumb on your wife, you can give it to her,'

Andy

said.

'You better start making sense, boy, or you're going over.'

"The government allows you a one-time-only gift to your spouse,' Andy

said. 'It's good up to sixty thousand dollars.'

Hadley was now looking at Andy as if he had been poleaxed. 'Naw, that

ain't right,' he said. 'Tax free?'

'Tax free,' Andy said. 'IRS can't touch cent one.'

'How would you know a thing like that?'

Tim Youngblood said: 'He used to be a banker, Byron. I s'pose he might-'

'Shut ya head, Trout,' Hadley said without looking at him. Tim

Youngblood flushed and shut up. Some of the guards called him Trout

because of his thick lips and buggy eyes. Hadley kept looking at Andy.

'You're the smart banker who shot his wife. Why should I believe a smart

banker like you? So I can wind up in here breaking rocks right alongside

you? You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

Andy said quietly, 'If you went to jail for tax evasion, you'd go to a

federal penitentiary, not Shawshank. But you won't. The tax-free gift to the

spouse is a perfectly legal loophole. I've done dozens no, hundreds of

them. It's meant primarily for people with small businesses to pass on, or

for people who come into one-time-only windfalls. Like yourself.'

'I think you're lying,' Hadley said, but he didn't-you could see he didn't.

There was an emotion dawning on his face, something that was grotesque

overlying that long, ugly countenence and that receding, sunburned brow.

An almost obscene emotion when seen on the features of Byron Hadley. It

was hope.

'No, I'm not lying. There's no reason why you should take my word for it,

either. Engage a lawyer -'

'Ambulance-chasing highway-robbing cocksuckers!' Hadley cried. Andy

shrugged. "Then go to the IRS. They'll tell you the same thing for free.

Actually, you don't need me to tell you at all. You would have investigated

the matter for yourself.'

'You fucking-A. I don't need any smart wife-killing banker to show me

where the bear shit in the buckwheat.'

'You'll need a tax lawyer or a banker to set up the gift for you and that

will cost you something,' Andy said. 'Or if you were interested, I'd be glad

to set it up for you nearly free of charge. The price would be three beers

apiece for my co-workers -'

'Co-workers,' Mert said, and let out a rusty guffaw. He slapped his knee.

A real knee-slapper was old Mert, and I hope he died of intestinal cancer in

a part of the world were morphine is as of yet undiscovered. 'Co-workers,

ain't that cute? Co-workers! You ain't got any -'

'Shut your friggin' trap,' Hadley growled, and Mert shut. Hadley looked at

Andy again. 'What was you saying?'

'I was saying that I'd only ask three beers apiece for my co-workers, if

that seems fair,' Andy said. 'I think a man feels more like a man when he's

working out of doors in the springtime if he can have a bottle of suds. That's

only my opinion. It would go down smooth, and I'm sure you'd have their

gratitude.'

I have talked to some of the other men who were up there that day-

Rennie Martin, Logan St Pierre, and Paul Bonsaint were three of them-and

we all saw the same thing then felt the same thing. Suddenly it was Andy

who had the upper hand. It was Hadley who had the gun on his hip and the

billy in his hand, Hadley who had his friend Greg Staminas behind him and

the whole prison administration behind Stammas, the whole power of the

state behind that, but all at once in that golden

sunshine it didn't matter, and I felt my heart leap up in my chest as it

never had since the truck drove me and four others through the gate back in

1938 and I stepped out into the exercise yard.

Andy was looking at Hadley with those cold, clear, calm eyes, and it

wasn't just the thirty-five thousand then, we all agreed on that. I've played it

over and over in my mind and I know. It was man against man, and Andy

simply forced him, the way a strong man can force a weaker man's wrist to

the table in a game of Indian wrestling. There was no reason, you see, why

Hadley couldn't've given Mert the nod at that very minute, pitched Andy

overside onto his head, and still taken Andy's advice.

No reason. But he didn't.

'I could get you all a couple of beers if I wanted to,' Hadley said. 'A beer

does taste good while you're workin.' The colossal prick even managed to

sound magnanimous.

'I'd just give you one piece of advice the IRS wouldn't bother with,' Andy

said. His eyes were fixed unwinkingly on Hadley's. 'Make the gift to your

wife if you're sure. If you think there's even a chance she might double-

cross you or backshoot you, we could work out something else -'

'Double-cross me?' Hadley asked harshly. 'Double-cross me! Mr Hotshot

Banker, if she ate her way through a boxcar of Ex-Lax, she wouldn't dare

fart unless I gave her the nod.'

Mert, Youngblood, and the other screws yucked it up dutifully. Andy

never cracked a smile.

'I'll write down the forms you need,' he said. 'You can get them at the post

office, and I'll fill them out for your signature.'

That sounded suitably important, and Hadley's chest swelled. Then he

glared around at the rest of us and hollered, "What are you jimmies starin'

at? Move your asses, goddammit!' He looked back at Andy. 'You come over

here with me, hotshot. And listen to me well: if you're Jewing me somehow,

you're gonna find yourself chasing your head around Shower C before the

week's out.'

'Yes, I understand that,' Andy said softly.

And he did understand it. The way it turned out, he understood a lot more

than I did-more than any of us did.

That's how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that

tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ending up sitting in a row at ten o'clock

on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest

screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank Prison. That beer was piss-

warm, but it was still the best I ever had in my life. We sat and drank it and

felt the sun on our shoulders, and not even the expression of half

amusement, half-contempt on Hadley's face-as if he was watching apes

drink beer instead of men -could spoil it. It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-

break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men. We could have

been drinking beer and tarring the roof of one of our own houses.

Only Andy didn't drink. I already told you about his drinking habits. He

sat hunkered down in the shade, hands dangling between his knees,

watching us and smiling a little. It's amazing how many men remember him

that way, and amazing how many men were on that work-crew when Andy

Dufresne faced down Byron Hadley. I thought there were nine or ten of us,

but by 1955 there must have been two hundred of us, maybe more if you

believed what you heard.

So, yeah-if you asked me to give you a flat-out answer to the question of

whether I'm trying to tell you about a man or a legend that got made up

around the

man, like a pearl around a little piece of grit-I'd have to say that the

answer lies somewhere in between.

All I know for sure is that Andy Dufresne wasn't much like me or anyone

else I ever knew since I came inside. He brought in five hundred dollars

jammed up his back porch, but somehow that graymeat son of a bitch

managed to bring in something else as well. A sense of his own worth,

maybe, or a feeling that he would be the winner in the end or maybe it was

only a sense of freedom, even inside these goddamned grey walls. It was a

kind of inner light he carried around with him. I only knew him to lose that

light once, and that is also a part of this story.

By World Series time of 1950-this was the year Bobby Thompson hit his

famous home run at the end of the season, you will remember-Andy was

having no more trouble from the sisters. Stammas and Hadley had passed

the word. If Andy Dufresne came to either of them or any of the other

screws that formed a part of their coterie, and showed so much as a single

drop of blood in his underpants, every sister in Shawshank would go to bed

that night with a headache. They didn't fight it. As I have pointed out, there

was always an eighteen-year-old car thief or a firebug or some guy who'd

gotten his kicks handling little children. After the day on the plate-shop

roof, Andy went his way and the sisters went theirs.

He was working in the library then, under a tough old con named Brooks

Hatlen. Hatlen had gotten the job back in the late 20s because he had a

college education. Brooksie's degree was in animal husbandry, true enough,

but college educations in institutes of lower learning like The Shank are so

rare that it's a case of beggars not being able to be choosers.

In 1952 Brooksie, who had killed his wife and daughter after a losing

streak at poker back when Coolidge was President, was paroled. As usual,

the state in all its wisdom had let him go long after any chance he might

have had to become a useful part of society was gone. He was sixty-eight

and arthritic when he tottered out of the main gate in his Polish suit and his

French shoes, his parole papers in one 'and and a Greyhound bus ticket in

the other. He was crying when he left. Shawshank was his world. What lay

beyond its vails was as terrible to Brooks as the Western Seas had been to

superstitious 13th-century sailors. In prison, Brooksie had been a person of

some importance. He was the head librarian, an educated man. If he went to

the Kittery library and asked or a job, they wouldn't give him a library card.

I heard he lied in a home for indigent old folks up Freeport way in 1952,

and at that he lasted about six months longer than I thought he would. Yeah,

I guess the state got its own back on Brooksie, all right. They trained him to

like it inside the shithouse and then they threw him out.

Andy succeeded to Brooksie's job, and he was head librarian for twenty-

three years. He used the same force of will I'd seen him use on Byron

Hadley to get what he wanted for the library, and I saw him gradually turn

one small room (which still smelled of turpentine because it had been a

paint closet until 1922 and had never been properly aired) lined with

Reader's Digest Condensed Books and National Geographies into the best

prison library in New England.

He did it a step at a time. He put a suggestion box by the door and

patiently weeded out such attempts at humour as More Fuk-Boox Pleeze

and Escape in 10 EZ Lesions. He got sold of the things the prisoners

seemed serious about. He wrote to three major book clubs in New York and

got two of them, The Literary Guild and The Book of the Month Club, to

send editions of all their major selections to us at a special cheap rate. He

discovered a hunger for information on such snail hobbies as soap-carving,

woodworking, sleight of hand, and card solitaire. He got all the books he

could on such subjects. And those two jailhouse staples, Erie Stanley

Gardener and Louis L'Amour. Cons never seem to get enough of the

courtroom or the open range. And yes, he did keep a box of fairly spicy

paperbacks under the checkout desk, loaning them out carefully and making

sure they always got back. Even so, each new acquisition of that type was

quickly read to tatters. He began to write to the state senate in Augusta in

1954. Staminas was warden by then, and he used to pretend Andy was some

sort of mascot He was always in the library, shooting the bull with Andy,

and sometimes he'd even throw a paternal arm around Andy's shoulders or

give him a goose. He didn't fool anybody. Andy Dufresne was no one's

mascot.

He told Andy that maybe he'd been a banker on the outside, but that part

of his life was receding rapidly into his past and he had better get a hold on

the facts of prison life. As far as that bunch of jumped-up Republican

Rotarians in Augusta was concerned, there were only three viable

expenditures of the taxpayers' money in the field of prisons and corrections.

Number one was more walls, number two was more bars, and number three

was more guards. As far as the state senate was concerned, Stammas

explained, the folks in Thomastan and Shawshank and Pittsfield and South

Portland were the scum of the earth. They were there to do hard time, and

by God and Sonny Jesus, it was hard time they were going to do. And if

there were a few weevils in the bread, wasn't that just too fucking bad?

Andy smiled his small, composed smile and asked Stammas what would

happen to a block of concrete if a drop of water fell on it once every year

for a million years. Stammas laughed and clapped Andy on the back. 'You

got no million years, old horse, but if you did, I believe you'd do it with that

same little grin on your face. You go on and write your letters. I'll even mail

them for you if you pay for the stamps.' Which Andy did. And he had the

last laugh, although Stammas and Hadley weren't around to see it Andy's

requests for library funds were routinely turned down until 1960, when he

received a check for two hundred dollars-the senate probably appropriated

it in hopes that he would shut up and go away. Vain hope. Andy felt that he

had finally gotten one foot in the door and he simply redoubled his efforts;

two letters a week instead of one. In 1962 he got four hundred dollars, and

for the rest of the decade the library received seven hundred dollars a year

like clockwork. By 1971 that had risen to an even thousand. Not much

stacked up against what your average small-town library receives, I guess,

but a thousand bucks can buy a lot of recycled Perry Mason stories and Jake

Logan Westerns. By the time Andy left, you could go into the library

(expanded from its original paint-locker to three rooms), and find just about

anything you'd want. And if you couldn't find it, chances were good that

Andy could get it for you.

Now you're asking yourself if all this came about just because Andy told

Byron Hadley how to save the taxes on his windfall inheritance. The answer

is yes and no. You can probably figure out what happened for yourself.

Word got around that Shawshank was housing its very own pet financial

wizard. In the late spring and the summer of 1950, Andy set up two trust

funds for guards who wanted to assure a college education for their kids, he

advised a couple of others who wanted to take small fliers in common stock

(and they did pretty damn well, as things turned out, one of them did so

well he was able to take an early retirement two years later), and I'll be

damned if he didn't advise the warden himself, old Lemon Lips George

Dunahy, on how to go about setting up a tax-shelter for himself. That was

just before Dunahy got the bum's rush, and I believe he must have been

dreaming about all the millions his book was going to make him. By April

of 1951, Andy was doing the tax returns for half the screws at Shawshank,

and by 1952,

he was doing almost all of them. He was paid in what may be a prison's

most valuable coin: simple goodwill.

Later on, after Greg Stammas took over the warden's office, Andy

became even more important-but if I tried to tell you the specifics of just

how, I'd be guessing. There are some things I know about and others I can

only guess at. I know that there were some prisoners who received all sorts

of special considerations-radios in their cells, extraordinary visiting

privileges, things like that-and there were people on the outside who were

paying for them to have those privileges. Such people are known as 'angels'

by the prisoners. All at once some fellow would be excused from working

in the plate-shop on Saturday forenoons, and you'd know that fellow had an

angel out there who'd coughed up a chuck of dough to make sure it

happened. The way it usually works is that the angel will pay the bribe to

some middle-level screw, and the screw will spread the grease both up and

down the administrative ladder.

Then there was the discount auto repair service that laid Warden Dunahy

low, It went underground for a while and then emerged stronger than ever in

the late fifties. And some of the contractors that worked at the prison from

time to time were paying kickbacks to the top administration officials, I'm

pretty sure, and the same was almost certainly true of the companies whose

equipment was bought and installed in the laundry and the licence-plate

shop and the stamping-mill that was built in 1963.

By the late sixties there was also a booming trade in pills, and the same

administrative crowd was involved in turning a buck on that All of it added

up to a pretty good-sized river of illicit income. Not like the pile of

clandestine bucks that must fly around a really big prison like Attica or San

Quentin, but not peanuts, either. And money itself becomes a problem after

a while. You can't just stuff it into your wallet and then shell out a bunch of

crumpled twenties and dog-eared tens when you want a pool built in your

back yard or an addition put on your house. Once you get past a certain

point, you have to explain where that money came from and if your

explanations aren't convincing enough, you're apt to wind up wearing a

number yourself.

So there was a need for Andy's services. They took him out of the

laundry and installed him in the library, but if you wanted to look at it

another way, they never took him out of the laundry at all. They just set him

to work washing dirty money instead of dirty sheets. He funnelled it into

stocks, bonds, tax-free municipals, you name it. He told me once about ten

years after that day on the plate-shop roof that his feelings about what he

was doing were pretty clear, and that his conscience was relatively

untroubled. The rackets would have gone on with him or without him. He

had not asked to be sent to Shawshank, he went on; he was an innocent man

who had been victimized by colossal bad luck, not a missionary or a do-

gooder.

'Besides, Red,' he told me with that same half-grin, 'what I'm doing in

here isn't all that different from what I was doing outside. I'll hand you a

pretty cynical axiom: the amount of expert financial help an individual or

company needs rises in direct proportion to how many people that person or

business is screwing.

The people who run this place are stupid, brutal monsters for the most

part. The people who run the straight world are brutal and monstrous, but

they happen not to be quite as stupid, because the standard of competence

out there is a little higher. Not much, but a little.'

'But the pills,' I said. 'I don't want to tell you your business, but they

make me nervous. Reds, uppers, downers, nembutals-now they've got these

things they call Phase Fours. I won't get anything like that. Never have.'

'No,' Andy said. 'I don't like the pills either. Never have. But I'm not

much of a one for cigarettes or booze, either. But I don't push the pills. I

don't bring them in, and I don't sell them once they are in. Mostly it's the

screws who do that.'

'But-'

'Yeah, I know. There's a fine line there. What it comes down to, Red, is

some people refuse to get their hands dirty at all. That's called sainthood,

and the pigeons land on your shoulders and crap all over your shirt. The

other extreme is to take a bath in the dirt and deal any goddamned thing that

will turn a dollar-guns, switchblades, big H, what the hell. You ever have a

con come up to you and offer you a contract?' I nodded. It's happened a lot

of times over the years. You're, after all, the man who can get it. And they

figure if you can get them a nine-bolt battery for their transistor radio or a

carton of Luckies or a lid of reefer, you can put them in touch with a guy

who'll use a knife.

'Sure you have,' Andy agreed. 'But you don't do it. Because guys like us,

Red, we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or

bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over

the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against

what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your

good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're

doing by how well you sleep at night and what your dreams are like.'

'Good intentions,' I said, and laughed. 'I know all about that, Andy. A

fellow can toddle right off to hell on that road.'

'Don't you believe it, ' he said, growing sombre. 'This is hell right here.

Right here in The Shank. They sell pills and I tell them what to do with the

money. But I've also got the library, and I know of over two dozen guys

who have used the books in here to help them pass their high school

equivalency tests. Maybe when they get out of here they'll be able to crawl

off the shitheap. When we needed that second room back in 1957, I got it

Because they want to keep me happy. I work cheap. That's the trade-off.'

'And you've got your own private quarters.'

'Sure. That's the way I like it.'

The prison population had risen slowly all through the fifties, and it damn

near exploded in the sixties, what with every college-age kid in America

wanting to try dope and the perfectly ridiculous penalties for the use of a

little reefer. But in all that time Andy never had a cellmate, except for a big,

silent Indian named Normaden (like all Indians in The Shank, he was called

Chief), and Normaden didn't last long. A lot of the other long-timers

thought Andy was crazy, but Andy just smiled. He lived alone and he liked

it that way and as he'd said, they liked to keep him happy. He worked

cheap.

Prison time is slow time, sometimes you'd swear it's stop-time, but it

passes. It passes. George Dunahy departed the scene in a welter of

newspaper headlines shouting SCANDAL and NEST-FEATHERING.

Stammas succeeded him, and for the next six years Shawshank was a kind

of living hell. During the reign of Greg Stammas, the beds in the infirmary

and the cells in the solitary wing were always full. One day in 1958 I

looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I kept in my cell and saw a forty-

year-old man looking back at me. A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid

with a big mop of carrotty red hair, half-crazy with remorse, thinking about

suicide. That kid was gone. The red hair was half grey and starting to

recede. There were crow's tracks around the eyes. On that day I could see

an old man inside, waiting his time to come out. It scared me. Nobody

wants to grow old in stir.

Stammas went early in 1959. There had been several investigative

reporters sniffing around, and one of them even did four months under an

assumed name, for a crime made up out of whole cloth. They were getting

ready to drag out SCANDAL and NEST-FEATHERING again, but before

they could bring the hammer down on him, Stammas ran. I can understand

that; boy, can I ever. If he had been tried and convicted, he could have

ended up right in here. If so, he might have lasted all of five hours. Byron

Hadley had gone two years earlier. The sucker had a heart attack and took

an early retirement. Andy never got touched by the Stammas affair. In early

1959 a new warden was appointed, and a new assistant warden, and a new

chief of guards. For the next eight months or so, Andy was just another con

again. It was during that period that Normaden, the big half-breed

Passamaquoddy, shared Andy's cell with him. Then everything just started

up again. Normaden was moved out, and Andy was living in solitary

splendour again. The names at the top change, but the rackets never do.

I talked to Normaden once about Andy. 'Nice fella,' Normaden said. It

was hard to make out anything he said because he had & harelip and a cleft

palate; his words all came out in a slush. 'I liked it there. He never made

fun. But he didn't want me there. I could tell.' Big shrug. 'I was glad to go,

me. Bad draught in that cell. All the time cold. He don't let nobody touch

his things. That's okay. Nice man, never made fun. But big draught.' Rita

Hay worth hung in Andy's cell until 1955, if I remember right Then it was

Marilyn Monroe, that picture from The Seven Year Itch where she's

standing over a subway grating and the warm air is flipping her skirt up.

Marilyn lasted until 1960, and she was considerably tattered about the

edges when Andy replaced her with Jayne Mansfield. Jayne was, you

should pardon the expression, a bust. After only a year or so she was

replaced with an English actress-might have been Hazel Court, but I'm not

sure. In 1966 that one came down and Raquel Welch went up for a record-

breaking six-year engagement in Andy's cell. The last poster to hang there

was a pretty country-rock singer whose name was Linda Ronstadt I asked

him once what the posters meant to him, and he gave me a peculiar,

surprised sort of look. 'Why, they mean the same thing to me as they do to

most cons, I guess,' he said. 'Freedom. You look at those pretty women and

you feel like you could almost not quite but almost step right through and

be beside them. Be free. I guess that's why I always liked Raquel Welch the

best It wasn't just her; it was that beach she was standing on. Looked like

she was down in Mexico somewhere. Someplace quiet, where a man would

be able to hear himself think. Didn't you ever feel that way about a picture,

Red? That you could almost step right through it?' I said I'd never really

thought of it that way. 'Maybe someday you'll see what I mean,' he said, and

he was right. Years later I saw exactly what he meant and when I did, the

first thing I thought of was Normaden, and about how he'd said it was

always cold in Andy's cell.

A terrible thing happened to Andy in late March or early April of 1963. I

have told you that he had something that most of the other prisoners, myself

included, seemed to lack. Call it a sense of equanimity, or a feeling of inner

peace, maybe even a constant and unwavering faith that someday the long

nightmare would end. Whatever you want to call it, Andy Dufresne always

seemed to have his act together.

There was none of that sullen desperation about him that seems to afflict

most lifers after a while; you could never smell hopelessness on him. Until

that late winter of '63. We had another warden by then, a man named

Samuel Norton. The Mather brothers, Cotton and Increase, would have felt

right at home with Sam Norton. So far as I know, no one had ever seen him

so much as crack a smile. He had a thirty-year pin from the Baptist Advent

Church of Eliot. His major innovation as the head of our happy family was

to make sure that each incoming prisoner had a New Testament. He had a

small plaque on his desk, gold letters inlaid in teakwood, which said

CHRIST IS MY SAVIOUR. A sampler on the wall, made by his wife, read:

HIS JUDGMENT COMETH AND THAT RIGHT EARLY. This latter

sentiment cut zero ice with most of us. We felt that the judgment had

already occurred, and we would be willing to testify with the best of them

that the rock would not hide us nor the dead tree give us shelter. He had a

Bible quote for every occasion, did Mr Sam Norton, and whenever you

meet a man like that, my best advice to you would be to grin big and cover

up your balls with both hands. There were less infirmary cases than in the

days of Greg Stammas, and so far as I know the moonlight burials ceased

altogether, but this is not to say that Norton was not a believer in

punishment. Solitary was always well populated. Men lost their teeth not

from beatings but from bread and water diets. It began to be called grain

and drain, as in I'm on the Sam Norton grain and drain train, boys.'

The man was the foulest hypocrite that I ever saw in a high position. The

rackets I told you about earlier continued to flourish, but Sam Norton added

his own new wrinkles. Andy knew about them all, and because we had

gotten to be pretty good friends by that time, he let me in on some of them.

When Andy talked about them, an expression of amused, disgusted wonder

would come over his face, as if he was telling me about some ugly,

predatory species of bug that has, by its very ugliness and greed, somehow

more comic than terrible.

It was Warden Norton who instituted the 'Inside-Out' program you may

have read about some sixteen or seventeen years back; it was even written

up in Newsweek. In the press it sounded like a real advance in practical

corrections and rehabilitation. There were prisoners out cutting pulpwood,

prisoners repairing bridges and causeways, prisoners constructing potato

cellars. Norton called it 'Inside-Out' and was invited to explain it to damn

near every Rotary and Kiwanis club in New England, especially after he got

his picture in Newsweek. The prisoners called it 'road-ganging', but so far

as I know, none of them were ever invited to express their views to the

Kiwanians or the Loyal Order of the Moose.

Norton was right in there on every operation, thirty-year church-pin and

all, from cutting pulp to digging storm-drains to laying new culverts on

state highways, there was Norton, skimming off the top. There were a

hundred ways to do it -men, materials, you name it. But he had it coming

another way, as well. The construction businesses in the area were deathly

afraid of Norton's Inside-Out programme, because prison labour is slave

labour, and you can't compete with that. So Sam Norton, he of the

Testaments and the thirty-year church-pin, was passed a good many thick

envelopes under the table during his fifteen-year tenure as Shawshank's

warden. And when an envelope was passed, he would either overbid the

project, not bid at all, or claim that all his Inside-Outers were committed

elsewhere. It has always been something of a wonder to me that Norton was

never found in the trunk of a Thunderbird parked off a highway somewhere

down in Massachusetts with his hands tied behind his back and half a dozen

bullets in his head. Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how

the money rolled in. Norton must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion

that the best way to figure out which folks God favours is by checking their

bank accounts.

Andy Dufresne was his right hand in all of this, his silent partner. The

prison library was Andy's hostage to fortune. Norton knew it, and Norton

used it. Andy told me that one of Norton's favourite aphorisms was One

hand washes the other. So Andy

gave good advice and made useful suggestions. I can't say for sure that he

hand-tooled Norton's Inside-Out program, but I'm damned sure he

processed the money for the Jesus-shouting son of a whore. He gave good

advice, made useful suggestions, the money got spread around, and son of

a bitch! The library would get a new set of automotive repair manuals, a

fresh set of Grolier Encyclopedias, books on how to prepare for the

Scholastic Achievement Tests. And, of course, more Erie Stanley Gardeners

and more Louis L'Amours. And I'm convinced that what happened

happened because Norton just didn't want to lose his good right hand. I'll go

further: it happened because he was scared of what might happen-what

Andy might say against him-if Andy ever got clear of Shawshank State

Prison.

I got the story a chunk here and a chunk there over a space of seven

years, some of it from Andy-but not all. He never wanted to talk about that

part of his life, and I don't blame him. I got parts of it from maybe half a

dozen different sources. I've said once that prisoners are nothing but slaves,

but they have that slave habit of looking dumb and keeping their ears open.

I got it backwards and forwards and in the middle, but I'll give it to you

from point A to point Z, and maybe you'll understand why the man spent

about ten months in a bleak, depressed daze. See, I don't think he knew the

truth until 1963, fifteen years after he came into this sweet little hell-hole.

Until he met Tommy Williams, I don't think he knew how bad it could get.

Tommy Williams joined our happy little Shawshank family in November

of 1962. Tommy thought of himself as a native of Massachusetts, but he

wasn't proud; in his twenty-seven years he'd done time all over New

England. He was a professional thief, and as you may have guessed, my

own feeling was that he should have picked another profession.

He was a married man, and his wife came to visit each and every week.

She had an idea that things might go better with Tommy-and consequently

better with their three-year-old and herself-if he got his high school degree.

She talked him into it, and so Tommy Williams started visiting the library

on a regular basis. For Andy, this was an old routine by then. He saw that

Tommy got a series of high school equivalency tests. Tommy would brush

up on the subjects he had passed in high-school -there weren't many-and

then take the test. Andy also saw that he was enrolled in a number of

correspondence courses covering the subjects he had failed in school or just

missed by dropping out. He probably wasn't the best student Andy ever

took over the jumps, and I don't know if he ever did get his high school

diploma, but that forms no part of my story. The important thing was that he

came to like Andy Dufresne very much, as most people did after a while.

On a couple of occasions he asked Andy 'what a smart guy like you is

doing in the joint' -a question which is the rough equivalent of that one that

goes 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?' But Andy wasn't

the type to tell him; he would only smile and turn the conversation into

some other channel. Quite normally, Tommy asked someone else, and when

he finally got the story, I guess he also got the shock of his young life. The

person he asked was his partner on the laundry's steam ironer and folder.

The inmates call this device the mangler, because that's exactly what it will

do to you if you aren't paying attention and get your bad self caught in it.

His partner was Charlie Lathrop, who had been in for about twelve years on

a murder charge. He was more than glad to reheat the details of the

Dufresne murder trial for Tommy; it broke the monotony of pulling freshly

pressed bedsheets out of the machine and tucking them into the basket. He

was just getting to the jury waiting until after lunch to bring in their guilty

verdict when the trouble whistle went off and the mangler grated to a stop.

They had been feeding in freshly washed sheets from the

Eliot Nursing Home at the far end; these were spat out dry and neatly

pressed at Tommy's and Charlie's end at the rate of one every five seconds.

Their job was to grab them, fold them, and slap them into the cart, which

had already been lined with brown paper.

But Tommy Williams was just standing there, staring at Charlie Lathrop,

his mouth unhinged all the way to his chest. He was standing in & drift of

sheets that had come through dean and which were now sopping up all the

wet muck on the floor-and in a laundry wetwash, there's plenty of muck.

So the head bull that day, Homer Jessup, comes rushing over, bellowing

his head off and on the prod for trouble. Tommy took no notice of him. He

spoke to Charlie as if old Homer, who had busted more heads than he could

probably count, hadn't been there. 'What did you say that golf pro's name

was?'

'Quentin,' Charlie answered back, all confused and upset by now. He later

said that the kid was as white as a truce flag, 'Glenn Quentin, I think.

Something like that, anyway -'

'Here now, here now,' Homer Jessup roared, his neck as red as a rooster's

comb. 'Get them sheets in cold water! Get quick! Get quick, by Jesus, you -'

'Glenn Quentin, oh my God,' Tommy Williams said, and that was all he

got to say because Homer Jessup, that least peaceable of men, brought his

billy down behind his ear. Tommy hit the floor so hard he broke off three of

his front teeth. When he woke up he was in solitary, and confined to same

for a week, riding a boxcar on Sam Norton's famous grain and drain train.

Plus a black mark on his report card.

That was in early February in 1963, and Tommy Williams went around to

six or seven other long-timers after he got out of solitary and got pretty

much the same story. I know; I was one of them. But when I asked him why

he wanted it, he just clammed up.

Then one day he went to the library and spilled one helluva big budget of

information to Andy Dufresne. And for the first and last time, at least since

he had approached me about the Rita Hayworth poster like a kid burying his

first pack of Trojans, Andy lost his cool only this time he blew it entirely.

I saw him later that day, and he looked like a man who has stepped on the

business end of a rake and given himself a good one, whap between the

eyes. His hands were trembling, and when I spoke to him, he didn't answer.

Before that afternoon was out he had caught up with Billy Hanlon, who was

the head screw, and set up an appointment with Warden Norton for the

following day. He told me later that he didn't sleep a wink all that night; he

just listened to a cold winter wind howling outside, watched the

searchlights go around and around, putting long, moving shadows on the

cement walls of the cage he had called home since Harry Truman was

President and tried to think it all out He said it was as if Tommy had

produced a key which fitted a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like his

own cell. Only instead of holding a man, that cage held a tiger, and that

tiger's name was Hope. Williams had produced the key that unlocked the

cage and the tiger was out, willy-nilly, to roam his brain.

Four years before, Tommy Williams had been arrested in Rhode Island,

driving a stolen car that was full of stolen merchandise. Tommy turned in

his accomplice, the DA played ball, and he got a lighter sentence two to

four, with time served. Eleven months after beginning his term, his old

cellmate got a ticket out and Tommy got a new one, a man named Elwood

Blatch. Blatch had been busted for burglary with a weapon and was serving

six to twelve.

'I never seen such a high-strung guy,' Tommy said. 'A man like that

should never want to be a burglar, specially not with a gun. The slightest

little noise, he'd go three feet into the air and come down shooting, more

likely than not One night he almost strangled me because some guy down

the hall was whopping on his cell bars with a tin cup. 'I did seven months

with bun, until they let me walk free. I got time served and time off, you

understand. I can't say we talked because you didn't, you know, exactly hold

a conversation with El Blatch. He held a conversation with you. He talked

all the time. Never shut up. If you tried to get a word in, he'd shake his fist

at you and roll his eyes. It gave me the cold chills whenever he done that.

Big tall guy he was, mostly bald, with these green eyes set way down deep

in the sockets. Jeez, I hope I never see him again. 'It was like a talkin' jag

every night When he grew up, the orphanages he run away from, the jobs

he done, the women he's fucked, the crap games he cleaned out I just let

him run an. My face ain't much, but I didn't want it, you know, rearranged

for me. 'According to him, he'd burgled over two hundred joints. It was hard

for me to believe, a guy like him who went off like a firecracker every time

someone cut a loud fart, but he swore it was true. Now listen to me, Red. I

know guys sometimes make things up after they know a thing, but even

before I knew about this golf pro guy, Quentin, I remember thinking that if

El Blatch ever burgled my house, and I found out about it later, I'd have to

count myself just about the luckiest motherfucker going still to be alive.

Can you imagine him in some lady's bedroom, sifting through her jool'ry

box, and she coughs in her sleep or turns over quick? It gives me the cold

chills just to think of something like that, I swear on my mother's name it

does.

'He said he'd killed people, too. People that gave him shit. At least that's

what he said. And I believed him. He sure looked like a man that could do

some killing. He was just so fucking high-strung! Like a pistol with a

sawed-off firing pin. I knew a guy who had a Smith & Wesson Police

Special with a sawed-off firing pin. It wasn't no good for nothing, except

maybe for something to jaw about. The pull on that gun was so light that it

would fire if this guy, Johnny Callahan, his name was, if he turned his

record-player on full volume and put it on top of one of the speakers. That's

how El Blatch was. I can't explain it any better. I just never doubted that he

had greased some people. 'So one night, just for something to say, I go:

"Who'd you kill?" Like a joke, you know. So he laughs and says, "There's

one guy doing time up Maine for these two people I killed. It was this guy

and the wife of the slob who's doing time. I was creeping their place and the

guy started to give me some shit."

'I can't remember if he ever told me the woman's name or not,' Tommy

went on. 'Maybe he did. But in New England, Dufresne's like Smith or

Jones in the rest of the country, because there's so many Frogs up here.

Dufresne, Lavesque, Ouelette, Poulin, who can remember Frog names? But

he told me the guy's name. He said the guy was Glenn Quentin and he was a

prick, a big rich prick, a golf pro. El said he thought the guy might have

cash in the house, maybe as much as five thousand dollars. That was a lot of

money back then, he says to me. So I go, "When was that?" And he goes,

"After the war. Just after the war."

'So he went in and he did the joint and they woke up and the guy gave

him some trouble. That's what El said. Maybe the guy just started to snore,

that's what I say. Anyway, El said Quentin was in the sack with some

hotshot lawyer's wife and they sent the lawyer up to Shawshank State

Prison. Then he laughs this big laugh. Holy Christ, I was never so glad of

anything as I was when I got my walking papers from that place.'

I guess you can see why Andy went a little wonky when Tommy told him

that story, and why he wanted to see the warden right away. Elwood Blatch

had been serving a six-to-twelve rap when Tommy knew him four years

before. By the time Andy heard all of this, in 1963, he might be on the

verge of getting out or already out. So those were the two prongs of the

spit Andy was roasting on-the idea that Blatch might still be in on one hand,

and the very real possibility that he might be gone like the wind on the

other. There were inconsistencies in Tommy's story, but aren't there always

in real life? Blatch told Tommy the man who got sent up was a hotshot

lawyer, and Andy was a banker, but those are two professions that people

who aren't very educated could easily get mixed up. And don't forget that

twelve years had gone by between the time Blatch was reading the

clippings about the trial and the time he told the tale to Tommy Williams.

He also told Tommy he got better than a thousand dollars from a footlocker

Quentin had in his closet, but the police said at Andy's trial that there had

been no sign of burglary. I have a few ideas about that. First, if you take the

cash and the man it belonged to is dead, how are you going to know

anything was stolen, unless someone else can tell you it was there to start

with? Second, who's to say Blatch wasn't lying about that part of it? Maybe

he didn't want to admit killing two people for nothing. Third, maybe there

were signs of burglary and the cops either overlooked them-cops can be

pretty dumb-or deliberately covered them up so they wouldn't screw the

DA's case. The guy was running for public office, remember, and he needed

a conviction to run on. An unsolved burglary-murder would have done him

no good at all. But of the three, I like the middle one best. I've known a few

Elwood Blatches in my time at Shawshank-the trigger-pullers with the

crazy eyes. Such fellows want you to think they got away with the

equivalent of the Hope Diamond on every caper, even if they got caught

with a two-dollar Timex and nine bucks on the one they're doing time for.

And there was one thing in Tommy's story that convinced Andy beyond a

shadow of a doubt. Blatch hadn't hit Quentin at random. He had called

Quentin 'a big rich prick', and he had known Quentin was a golf pro. Well,

Andy and his wife had been going out to that country club for drinks and

dinner once or twice a week for a couple of years, and Andy had done a

considerable amount of drinking there once he found out about his wife's

affair. There was a marina with the country club, and for a while in 1947

there had been a part-time grease-and-gas jockey working there who

matched Tommy's description of Elwood Blatch. A big tall man, mostly

bald, with deep-set green eyes. A man who had an unpleasant way of

looking at you, as though he was sizing you up. He wasn't there long, Andy

said. Either he quit or Briggs, the fellow in charge of the marina, fired him.

But he wasn't a man you forgot. He was too striking for that.

So Andy went to see Warden Norton on a rainy, windy day with big grey

clouds scudding across the sky above the grey walls, a day when the last of

the snow was starting to melt away and show lifeless patches of last year's

grass in the fields beyond the prison. The warden has a good-sized office in

the administration wing, and behind the warden's desk there's a door which

connects with the assistant warden's office. The assistant warden was out

that day, but a trustee was there. He was a half-lame fellow whose real

name I have forgotten; all the inmates, me included, called him Chester,

after Marshall Dillon's sidekick. Chester was supposed to be watering the

plants and dusting and waxing the floor. My guess is that the plants went

thirsty that day and the only waxing that was done happened because of

Chester's dirty ear polishing the keyhole plate of that connecting door.

He heard the warden's main door open and close and then Norton saying,

'Good morning, Dufresne, how can I help you?'

'Warden,' Andy began, and old Chester told us that he could hardly

recognize Andy's voice it was so changed. 'Warden there's something

something's happened to me that's that's so so I hardly know where to

begin.'

'Well, why don't you just begin at the beginning?' the warden said,

probably in his sweetest let's-all-turn-to-the-23rd-psalm-and-read-in-unison

voice. 'That usually works the best.'

And so Andy did. He began by refreshing Norton of the details of the

crime he had been imprisoned for. Then he told the warden exactly what

Tommy Williams had told him. He also gave out Tommy's name, which you

may think wasn't so wise in light of later developments, but I'd just ask you

what else he could have done, if his story was to have any credibility at all.

When he had finished, Norton was completely silent for some time. I can

just see him, probably tipped back in his office chair under the picture of

Governor Reed hanging on the wall, his fingers steepled, his liver lips

pursed, his brow wrinkled into ladder rungs halfway to the crown of his

head, his thirty-year pin gleaming mellowly.

'Yes,' he said finally. That's the damnedest story I ever heard. But I'll tell

you what surprises me most about it, Dufresne.'

'What's that, sir?'

'That you were taken in by it.'

'Sir? I don't understand what you mean.' And Chester said that Andy

Dufresne, who had faced down Byron Hadley on the plate-shop roof

thirteen years before, was almost floundering for words.

'Well now,' Norton said. 'It's pretty obvious to me that this young fellow

Williams is impressed with you. Quite taken with you, as a matter of fact.

He hears your tale of woe, and it's quite natural of him to want to cheer

you up, let's say. Quite natural. He's a young man, not terribly bright. Not

surprising he didn't realize what a state it would put you into. Now what I

suggest is -'

'Don't you think I thought of that?' Andy asked. 'But I'd never told

Tommy about the man working down at the marina. I never told anyone

that-it never even crossed my mind!

But Tommy's description of his cellmate and that man they're identical!'

'Well now, you may be indulging in a little selective perception there,'

Norton said with a chuckle. Phrases like that, selective perception, are

required learning for people in the penalogy and corrections business, and

they use them all they can.

"That's not it at all. Sir.'

"That's your slant on it,' Norton said, 'but mine differs. And let's

remember that I have only your word that there was such a man working at

the Falmouth Country Club back then.'

'No, sir,' Andy broke in again. 'No, that isn't true. Because-'

'Anyway,' Norton overrode him, expansive and loud, 'let's just look at it

from the other end of the telescope, shall we? Suppose -just suppose, now-

that there really was a fellow named Elwood Blotch.'

'Blatch,' Andy said tightly.

'Blatch, by all means. And let's say he was Thomas Williams's cellmate

in Rhode Island.

The chances are excellent that he has been released by now. Excellent.

Why, we don't even know how much time he might have done there before

he ended up with Williams, do we? Only that he was doing a six-to-twelve.'

'No. We don't know how much time he'd done. But Tommy said he was a

bad actor, a cut-up. I think there's a fair chance that he may still be in. Even

if he's been

released, the prison will have a record of his last known address, the

names of his relatives -'

'And both would almost certainly be dead ends.'

Andy was silent for a moment, and then he burst out: 'Well, it's a chance,

isn't

it?'

'Yes, of course it is. So just for a moment, Dufresne, let's assume that

Blatch exists and that he is still safely ensconced in the Rhode Island State

Penitentiary. Now what is he going to say if we bring this kettle of fish to

him in a bucket? Is he going to fall down on his knees, roll his eyes, and say

"I did it! I did it! By all means add a life term onto my burglary charge!"?'

'How can you be so obtuse?' Andy said, so low that Chester could barely

hear. But he heard the warden just fine.

'What? What did you call me?'

'Obtuse?' Andy cried. 'Is it deliberate?'

'Dufresne, you've taken five minutes of my time-no, seven-and I have a

very busy schedule today. So I believe we'll just declare this little meeting

closed and -'

'The country club will have all the old time-cards, don't you realize that?'

Andy shouted.

They'll have tax-forms and W-2s and unemployment compensation

forms, all with his name on them! There will be employees there now that

were there then, maybe Briggs himself! It's been fifteen years, not forever!

They'll remember him! They will remember Blatch! If I've got Tommy to

testify to what Blatch told him, and Briggs to testify that Blatch was there,

actually working at the country club, I can get a new trial! I can -'

'Guard! Guardl Take this man away!'

'What's the matter with you?' Andy said, and Chester told me he was very

nearly screaming by then. 'It's my life, my chance to get out, don't you see

that? And you won't make a single long-distance call to at least verify

Tommy's story? Listen, I'll pay for the call! I'll pay for -'

Then there was a sound of thrashing as the guards grabbed him and

started to drag him out 'Solitary,' Warden Norton said dryly. He was

probably-wearing his thirty-year pin as he said it 'Bread and water.'

And so they dragged Andy away, totally out of control now, still

screaming at the warden; Chester said you could hear him even after the

door was shut: 'It's my life! It's my life, don't you understand it's my life?'

Twenty days on the grain and drain train for Andy down there in solitary.

It was his second jolt in solitary, and his dust-up with Norton was his first

real black mark since he had joined our happy little family.

I'll tell you a little bit about Shawshank's solitary while we're on the

subject It's something of a throwback to those hardy pioneer days of the

early-to-mid- 1700s in Maine. In those days no one wasted much time

with such things as penalogy' and 'rehabilitation' and 'selective perception'.

In, those days, you were taken care of in terms of absolute black and white.

You were either guilty or innocent. If you were guilty, you were either hung

or put in gaol. And if you were sentenced to gaol, you did not go to an

institution. No, you dug your own gaol with a spade provided to you by the

Province of Maine. You dug it as wide and as deep as you could during the

period between sunup and sundown. Then, they gave you a couple of skins

and a bucket, and down you went Once down, the gaoler would bar the top

of your hole, throw down some grain or maybe a piece of maggoty meat

once or twice a week, and maybe there would be a dipperful; barley soup on

Sunday night You pissed in the

bucket, and you held up the same bucket for water when the gaoler came

around at six in the morning. When it rained, you used the bucket to bail out

your gaol-cell unless, that is, you wanted to drown like a rat in a

rainbarrel.

No one spent a long time 'in the hole', as it was called; thirty months was

an unusually long term, and so far as I've been able to tell, the longest term

ever spent from which an inmate actually emerged alive was served by the

so-called Durham Boy', a fourteen-year-old psychopath who castrated a

schoolmate with a piece of rusty metal. He did seven years, but of course he

went in young and strong.

You have to remember that for a crime that was more serious than petty

theft or blasphemy or forgetting to put a snotrag in your pocket when out of

doors on the Sabbath, you were hung. For low crimes such as those just

mentioned and for others like them, you'd do your three or six or nine

months in the hole and come out fishbelly white, cringing from the wide-

open spaces, your eyes half-blind, your teeth more than likely rocking and

rolling in their sockets from the scurvy, your feet crawling with fungus.

Jolly old Province of Maine. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

Shawshank's Solitary Wing was nowhere as bad as that I guess. Things

come in three major degrees in the human experience, I think. There's good,

bad, and terrible. And as you go down into progressive darkness towards

terrible, it gets harder and harder to make subdivisions.

To get to Solitary Wing you were led down twenty-three steps to a

basement level where the only sound was the drip of water. The only light

was supplied by a series of dangling sixty-watt bulbs. The cells were keg-

shaped, like those wall-safes rich people sometimes hide behind a picture.

Like a safe, the round doorways were hinged, and solid instead of barred.

You get ventilation from above, but no light except for your own sixty-watt

bulb, which was turned off from a master-switch promptly at eight p. m., an

hour before lights-out in the rest of the prison. The wire wasn't in a wire

mesh cage or anything like that. The feeling was that if you wanted to exist

down there in the dark, you were welcome to it. Not many did but after

eight, of course, you had no choice. You had a bunk bolted to the wall and a

can with no toilet seat. You had three ways to spend your time: sitting,

shitting, or sleeping. Big choice. Twenty days could get to seem like a year.

Thirty days could seem like two, and forty days like ten. Sometimes you

could hear rats in the ventilation system. In a situation like that,

subdivisions of terrible tend to get lost.

If anything at all can be said in favour of solitary, it's just that you get

time to think. Andy had twenty days in which to think while he enjoyed his

grain and drain, and when he got out he requested another meeting with the

warden. Request denied. Such a meeting, the warden told him, would be

'counter-productive'. That's another of those phrases you have to master

before you can go to work in the prisons and corrections field.

Patiently, Andy renewed his request And renewed it And renewed it He

had changed, had Andy Dufresne. Suddenly, as that spring of 1963 bloomed

around us, there were lines in his face and sprigs of grey showing in his

hair. He had lost that little trace of a smile that always seemed to linger

around his mouth. His eyes stared out into space more often, and you get to

know that when a man stares that way, he is counting up the years served,

the months, the weeks, the days.

He renewed his request and renewed it He was patient He had nothing

but time. It got to be summer. In Washington, President Kennedy was

promising a fresh assault on poverty and on civil rights inequalities, not

knowing he had only half a year to live. In Liverpool, a musical group

called The Beatles was emerging as a force to be reckoned with in British

music, but I guess that no one Stateside had yet heard of

them. The Boston Red Sox, still four years away from what New

England folks call The Miracle of '67, were languishing in the cellar of the

American League. All of those things were going on out in a larger world

where people walked free.

Norton saw him near the end of June, and this conversation I heard about

from Andy himself some seven years later.

'If it's the money, you don't have to worry,' Andy told Norton in a low

voice. 'Do you think I'd talk that up? I'd be cutting my own throat I'd be just

as indictable as -

That's enough,' Norton interrupted. His face was as long and cold as a

slate gravestone.

He leaned back in his office chair until the back of his head almost

touched the sampler reading HIS JUDGMENT COMETH AND THAT

RIGHT EARLY.

'But-'

'Don't you ever mention money to me again,' Norton said. 'Not in this

office, not anywhere. Not unless you want to see that library turned back

into a storage room and paint-locker again. Do you understand?'

'I was trying to set your mind at ease, that's all.'

'Well now, when I need a sorry son of a bitch like you to set my mind at

ease, I'll retire. I agreed to this appointment because I got tired of being

pestered, Dufresne. I want it to stop. If you want to buy this particular

Brooklyn Bridge, that's your affair. Don't make it mine. I could hear crazy

stories like yours twice a week if I wanted to lay myself open to them.

Every sinner in this place would be using me for a crying towel. I had more

respect for you. But this is the end. The end. Have we got an

understanding?'

'Yes,' Andy said. 'But I'll be hiring a lawyer, you know.'

'What in God's name for?'

'I think we can put it together,' Andy said. 'With Tommy Williams and

with my testimony and corroborative testimony from records and

employees at the country club, I think we can put it together.'

'Tommy Williams is no longer an inmate of this facility.'

'What?'

'He's been transferred.'

'Transferred where?'

'Cashman.'

At that, Andy fell silent. He was an intelligent man, but it would have

taken an extraordinarily stupid man not to smelt deal all over that. Cashman

was a minimum-security prison far up north in Aroostook County. The

inmates pick a lot of potatoes, and that's hard work, but they are paid a

decent wage for their labour and they can attend classes at CVI, a pretty

decent vocational-technical institute, if they so desire. More important to a

fellow like Tommy, a fellow with a young wife and a child, Cashman had a

furlough program which meant a chance to live like a normal man, at least

on the weekends. A chance to build a model plane with his kid, have sex

with his wife, maybe go on a picnic.

Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy's nose with

only one string attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now,

not ever. Or you'll end up doing hard time in Thomaston down there on

scenic Route 1 with the real hard guys, and instead of having sex with your

wife you'll be having it with some old bull queer. 'But why?' Andy said.

'Why would -'

'As a favour to you,' Norton said calmly, 'I checked with Rhode Island.

They did have an inmate named Elwood Blatch. He was given what they

call a PP-provisional parole, another one of these crazy liberal programmes

to put criminals out on the streets. He's since disappeared.'

Andy said: 'The warden down there is he a friend of yours?'

Sam Norton gave Andy a smile as cold as a deacon's watchchain. 'We are

acquainted,' he said.

' Why?' Andy repeated. 'Can't you tell me why you did it? You knew I

wasn't going to talk about about anything you might have had going. You

knew that. So why? 'Because people like you make me sick,' Norton said

deliberately. 'I like you right where you are, Mr Dufresne, and as long as I

am warden here at Shawshank, you are going to be right here. You see, you

used to think that you were better than anyone else. I have gotten pretty

good at seeing that on a man's face. I marked it on yours the first time I

walked into the library. It might as well have been written on your forehead

in capital letters. That look is gone now, and I like that just fine. It is not

just that you are a useful vessel, never think that. It is simply that men like

you need to learn humility. Why, you used to walk around that exercise yard

as if it was a living room and you were at one of those cocktail parties

where the hellhound walk around coveting each others' wives and husbands

and getting swinishly drunk. But you don't walk around that way anymore.

And I'll be watching to see if you should start to walk that way again. Over

a period of years, I'll be watching you with great pleasure. Now get the hell

out of here.'

'Okay. But all the extracurricular activities stop now, Norton. The

investment counselling, the scams, the free tax advice. It all stops. Get H &

R Block to tell you how to declare your extortionate income.'

Warden Norton's face first went brick-red and then all the colour fell out

of it 'You're going back into solitary for that thirty days. Bread and water.

Another black mark. And while you're in, think about this: if anything that's

been going on should stop, the library goes. I will make it my personal

business to see that it goes back to what it was before you came here. And I

will make your life very hard. Very difficult You'll do the hardest time it's

possible to do. You'll lose that one-bunk Hilton down in Cellblock 5, for

starters, and you'll lose those rocks on the windowsill, and you'll lose any

protection the guards have given you against the sodomites. You will lose

everything. Clear?' I guess it was clear enough.

Time continued to pass-the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only

one that really is magic. But Andy Dufresne had changed. He had grown

harder. That's the only way I can think of to put it He went on doing Warden

Norton's dirty work and he held onto the library, so outwardly things were

about the same. He continued to have his birthday drinks and his New

Year's Eve drinks; he continued to share out the rest of each bottle. I got

him fresh rock-polishing cloths from time to time, and in 1967 I got him a

new rock-hammer-the one I'd gotten him nineteen years ago had plumb

worn out Nineteen years! When you say it sudden like that, those three

syllables sound like the thud and double-locking of a tomb door. The rock-

hammer, which had been a ten-dollar item back then, went for twenty-two

by '67. He and I had a sad little grin over that. Andy continued to shape and

polish the rocks he found in the exercise yard, but the yard was smaller by

then; half of what had been there in 1950 had been asphalted over in 1962.

Nonetheless, he found enough to keep him occupied, I guess. When he had

finished with each rock he would put it carefully on his window ledge,

which faced east He told me he liked to look at them in the sun, the pieces

of the planet he had taken up from the dirt and shaped. Schists, quartzes,

granites. Funny little mica sculptures that were held together with airplane

glue. Various sedimentary conglomerates that were polished and cut in such

a way that you could see why Andy

called them 'millennium sandwiches'-the layers of different material that

had built up over a period of decades and centuries. Andy would give his

stones and his rock-sculptures away from time to time in order to make

room for new ones. He gave me the greatest number, I think-counting the

stones that looked like matched cufflinks, I had five. There was one of the

mica sculptures I told you about, carefully crafted to look like a man

throwing a javelin, and two of the sedimentary conglomerates, all the levels

showing in smoothly polished cross-section.

I've still got them, and I take them down every so often and think about

what a man can do, if he has time enough and the will to use it, a drop at a

time.

So, on the outside, at least, things were about the same. If Norton had

wanted to break Andy as badly as he had said, he would have had to look

below the surface to see the change. But if he had seen how different Andy

had become, I think Norton would have been well-satisfied with the four

years following his clash with Andy. He had told Andy that Andy walked

around the exercise yard as if he were at a cocktail party. That isn't the way

I would have put it, but I know what he meant. It goes back to what I said

about Andy wearing his freedom like an invisible coat, about how he never

really developed a prison mentality. His eyes never got that dull look. He

never developed the walk that men get when the day is over and they are

going back to their cells for another endless night-that flat-footed, hump-

shouldered walk. Andy walked with his shoulders squared and his step was

always light, as if he was heading home to a good home-cooked meal and a

good woman instead of to a tasteless mess of soggy vegetables, lumpy

mashed potato, and a slice or two of that fatty, gristly stuff most of the cons

called mystery meat that, and a picture of Raquel Welch on the wall. But

for those four years, although he never became exactly like the others, he

did become silent, introspective, and brooding. Who could blame him? So

maybe it was Warden Norton who was pleased at least, for a while.

His dark mood broke around the time of the 1967 World Series. That was

the dream year, the year the Red Sox won the pennant instead of placing

ninth, as the Las Vegas bookies had predicted. When it happened-when they

won the American League pennant- a kind of ebullience engulfed the whole

prison. There was a goofy sort of feeling that if the Dead Sox could come to

life, then maybe anybody could do it I can't explain that feeling now, any

more than an ex-Beatlemaniac could explain that madness, I suppose. But it

was real. Every radio in the place was tuned to the games as the Red Sox

pounded down the stretch. There was gloom when the Sox dropped a pair in

Cleveland near the end, and a nearly riotous joy when Rico Petrocelli put

away the pop fly that clinched it And then there was the gloom that came

when Lonborg was beaten in the seventh game of the Series to end the

dream just short of complete fruition. It probably pleased Norton to no end,

the son of a bitch. He liked his prison wearing sackcloth and ashes. But for

Andy, there was no tumble back down into gloom. He wasn't much of a

baseball fan anyway, and maybe that was why. Nevertheless, he seemed to

have caught the current of good feeling, and for him it didn't peter out again

after the last game of the Series. He had taken that invisible coat out of the

closet and put it on again. I remember one bright-gold fall day in very late

October, a couple of weeks after the World Series had ended. It must have

been a Sunday, because the exercise yard was full of men 'walking off the

week'-tossing a Frisbee or two, passing around a football, bartering what

they had to barter. Others would be at the long table in the Visitors' Hall,

under the watchful eyes of the screws, talking with their relatives, smoking

cigarettes, telling sincere lies, receiving their picked-over care packages.

Andy was squatting Indian-fashion against the wall, chunking two small

rocks together in his hands, his face turned up into the sunlight. It was

surprisingly warm, that sun, for a day so late in the year. 'Hello, Red,' he

called. 'Come on and sit a spell.' I did.

'You want this?' he asked, and handed me one of the two carefully

polished 'millennium sandwiches' I just told you about 'I sure do,' I said. 'It's

very pretty. Thank you.'

He shrugged and changed the subject 'Big anniversary coming up for you

year.'

I nodded. Next year would make me a thirty-year man. Sixty per cent of

my life spent in Shawshank Prison.

Think you'll ever get out?'

'Sure. When I have a long white beard and just about three marbles left

rolling around upstairs.'

He smiled a little and then turned his face up into the sun again, his eyes

closed. 'Feels good.'

'I think it always does when you know the damn winter's almost right on

top of

you.'

He nodded, and we were silent for a while.

'When I get out of here,' Andy said finally, 'I'm going where it's warm all

the time.' He spoke with such calm assurance you would have thought he

had only a month or so left to serve. 'You know where I'm goin', Red?'

'Nope.'

'Zihuatanejo,' he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music.

'Down in Mexico. It's a little place maybe twenty miles from Playa Azul

and Mexico Highway 37.

It's a hundred miles north-west of Acapulco on the Pacific Ocean. You

know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?'

I told him I didn't.

'They say it has no memory. And that's where I want to finish out my life,

Red. In a warm place that has no memory.'

He had picked up a handful of pebbles as he spoke; now he tossed them,

one by one, and watched them bounce and roll across the baseball

diamond's dirt infield, which would be under a foot of snow before long.

'Zihuatanejo. I'm going to have a little hotel down there. Six cabanas

along the beach, and six more set further back, for the highway trade. I'll

have a guy who'll take my guests out charter fishing. There'll be a trophy

for the guy who catches the biggest marlin of the season, and I'll put his

picture up in the lobby. It won't be a family place. It'll be a place for people

on their honeymoons first or second varieties.'

'And where are you going to get the money to buy this fabulous place?' I

asked. 'Your stock account?'

He looked at me and smiled. 'That's not so far wrong,' he said.

'Sometimes you startle me, Red.'

'What are you talking about?'

There are really only two types of men in the world when it comes to bad

trouble,' Andy said, cupping a match between his hands and lighting a

cigarette. 'Suppose there was a house full of rare paintings and sculptures

and fine old antiques, Red? And suppose the guy who owned the house

heard that there was a monster of a hurricane headed right at it.

One of those two kinds of men just hopes for the best The hurricane will

change course, he says to himself. No right-thinking hurricane would ever

dare wipe out all these Rembrandts, my two Degas horses, my Jackson

Pollocks and my Paul Klees.

Furthermore, God wouldn't allow it. And if worst comes to worst, they're

insured. That's one sort of man. The other sort just assumes that hurricane is

going to tear right through the middle of his house. If the weather bureau

says the hurricane just changed course, this guy assumes it'll change back in

order to put his house on ground zero again. This second type of guy knows

there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the

worst.'

I lit a cigarette of my own. 'Are you saying you prepared for the

eventuality?'

'Yes. I prepared for the hurricane. I knew how bad it looked. I didn't have

much time, but in the time I had, I operated. I had a friend-just about the

only person who stood by me-who worked for an investment company in

Portland. He died about six years ago.'

'Sorry.'

'Yeah.' Andy tossed his butt away. 'Linda and I had about fourteen

thousand dollars. Not a big bundle, but hell, we were young. We had our

whole lives ahead of us.' He grimaced a little, then laughed. 'When the shit

hit the fan, I started lugging my Rembrandts out of the path of the

hurricane. I sold my stocks and paid the capital gains tax just like a good

little boy. Declared everything. Didn't cut any corners.'

'Didn't they freeze your estate?'

'I was charged with murder, Red, not dead! You can't freeze the assets of

an innocent man-thank God. And it was a while before they even got brave

enough to charge me with the crime. Jim-my friend-and I, we had some

time. I got hit pretty good, just dumping everything like that. Got my nose

skinned. But at the time I had worse things to worry about than a small

skinning on the stock market.'

'Yeah, I'd say you did.'

'But when I came to Shawshank it was all safe. It's still safe. Outside

these walls, Red, there's a man that no living soul has ever seen face to face.

He has a Social Security card and a Maine driver's license. He's got a birth

certificate. Name of Peter Stevens. Nice, anonymous name, huh?'

'Who is he?' I asked. I thought I knew what he was going to say, but I

couldn't believe it.

'Me.'

'You're not going to tell me that you had time to set up a false identity

while the bulls were sweating you,' I said, 'or that you finished the job while

you were on trial for -'

'No, I'm not going to tell you that. My friend Jim was the one who set up

the false identity. He started after my appeal was turned down, and the

major pieces of identification were in his hands by the spring of 1950.'

'He must have been a pretty close friend,' I said. I was not sure how much

of this I believed- a little, a lot, or none. But the day was warm and the sun

was out, and it was one hell of a good story. 'All of that's one hundred per

cent illegal, setting up a false ID like that.'

'He was a close friend,' Andy said. 'We were in the war together. France,

Germany, the occupation. He was a good friend. He knew it was illegal, but

he also knew that setting up a false identity in this country is very easy and

very safe. He took my money-my money with all the taxes on it paid so the

IRS wouldn't get too

interested-and invested it for Peter Stevens. He did that in 1950 and

1951. Today it amounts to three hundred and seventy thousand dollars, plus

change.'

I guess my jaw made a thump when it dropped against my chest, because

smiled.

'Think of all the things people wish they'd invested in since 1950 or so,

and two or three of them will be things Peter Stevens was into. If I hadn't

ended up in here, I'd probably be worth seven or eight million bucks by

now. I'd have a Rolls and probably an ulcer as big as a portable radio.'

His hands went to the dirt and began sifting out more pebbles. They

moved gracefully, restlessly.

'I was hoping for the best and expecting the worst -nothing but that. The

false name was just to keep what little capital I had untainted. It was

lugging the paintings out of the path of the hurricane. But I had no idea that

the hurricane that it could go on as long as it has.'

I didn't say anything for a while. I guess I was trying to absorb the idea

that this small, spare man in prison grey next to me could be worth more

money than Warden Norton would make in the rest of his miserable life,

even with the scams thrown in.

'When you said you could get a lawyer, you sure weren't kidding,' I said

at last 'For that kind of dough you could have hired Clarence Darrow, or

whoever's passing for him these days. Why didn't you, Andy? Christ! You

could have been out of here like a rocket.'

He smiled. It was the same smile that had been on his face when he'd told

me he and his wife had had their whole lives ahead of them. 'No,' he said.

'A good lawyer would have sprung the Williams kid from Cashman

whether he wanted to go or not,' I said. I was getting carried away now.

'You could have gotten your new trial, hired private detectives to look for

that guy Blatch, and blown Norton out of the water to boot. Why not,

Andy?'

'Because I outsmarted myself. If I ever try to put my hands on Peter

Stevens's money from inside here, I'd lose every cent of it My friend Jim

could have arranged it, but Jim's dead. You see the problem?'

I saw it For all the good the money could do Andy, it might as well have

really belonged to another person. In a way, it did. And if the stuff it was

invested in suddenly turned bad, all Andy could do would be to watch the

plunge, to trace it day after day on the stocks-and-bonds page of the Press-

Herald. It's a tough life if you don't weaken, I guess. 'I'll tell you how it is,

Red. There's a big hayfield in the town of Buxton. You know where Buxton

is at, don't you?'

I said I did. It lies right next door to Scarborough.

"That's right And at the north end of this particular hayfield there's a rock

wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of

that wall is a rock that has no business in a Maine hayfield. It's a piece of

volcanic glass, and until 1947 it was a paperweight on my office desk. My

friend Jim put it in that wall. There's a key underneath it. The key opens a

safe deposit box in the Portland branch of the Casco Bank.'

'I guess you're in a pack of trouble,' I said. 'When your friend Jim died,

the IRS must have opened all of his safety deposit boxes. Along with the

executor of his will, of course.' Andy smiled and tapped the side of my

head. 'Not bad. There's more up there than marshmallows, I guess. But we

took care of the possibility that Jim might die while I was in the slam. The

box is in the Peter Stevens name, and once a year the

firm of lawyers that served as Jim's executors sends a check to the Casco

to cover the rental of the Stevens box.

'Peter Stevens is inside that box, just waiting to get out. His birth

certificate, his S. S. card, and his driver's license. The license is six years

out of date because Jim died six years ago, true, but it's still perfectly

renewable for a five-dollar fee. His stock certificates are there, the tax-free

municipals, and about eighteen bearer bonds in the amount of ten thousand

dollars each.' I whistled.

'Peter Stevens is locked in a safe deposit box at the Casco Bank in

Portland and Andy Dufresne is locked in a safe deposit box at Shawshank,'

he said. Tit for tat And the key that unlocks the box and the money and the

new life is under a hunk of black glass in a Buxton hayfield. Told you this

much, so I'll tell you something else, Red-for the last twenty years, give or

take, I have been watching the papers with a more than usual interest for

news of any construction projects in Buxton. I keep thinking that someday

soon I'm going to read that they're putting a highway through there, or

erecting a new community hospital, or building a shopping centre. Burying

my new life under ten feet of concrete, or spitting it into a swamp

somewhere with a big load of fill.' I blurted, 'Jesus Christ, Andy, if all of

this is true, how do you keep from going crazy?' He smiled. 'So far, all quiet

on the Western front.'

'But it could be years -'

'It will be. But maybe not as many as the state and Warden Norton think

it's going to be. I just can't afford to wait that long. I keep thinking about

Zihuatanejo and that small hotel. That's all I want from my life now, Red,

and I don't think that's too much to want. I didn't kill Glenn Quentin and I

didn't kill my wife, and that hotel it's not too much to want To swim and

get a tan and sleep in a room with open windows and space that's not too

much to want.' He slung the stones away.

'You know, Red,' he said in an offhand voice, 'a place like that I'd have

to have a man who knows how to get things.'

I thought about it for a long time. And the biggest drawback in my mind

wasn't even that we were talking pipedreams in a shitty little prison exercise

yard with armed guards looking down at us from their sentry posts. 'I

couldn't do it,' I said. 'I couldn't get along on the outside. I'm what they call

an institutional man now. In here I'm the man who can get it for you, yeah.

But out there, anyone can get it for you. Out there, if you want posters or

rock-hammers or one particular record or a boat-in-a-bottle model kit, you

can use the fucking Yellow Pages. In here, I'm the fucking Yellow Pages. I

wouldn't know how to begin. Or where.'

'You underestimate yourself,' he said. 'You're a selfeducated man, a self-

made man. A rather remarkable man, I think.'

'Hell, I don't even have a high school diploma.'

'I know that,' he said. 'But it isn't just a piece of paper that makes a man.

And it isn't just prison that breaks one, either.'

'I couldn't hack it outside, Andy. I know that.' He got up. 'You think it

over,' he said casually, just as the inside whistle blew. And he strolled off, as

if he was a free man who had just made another free man a proposition.

And for a while just that was enough to make me feel free. Andy could do

that. He could make me forget for a time that we were both lifers, at the

mercy of a hard-ass parole board and a psalm-singing warden who liked

Andy Dufresne right where he was. After all, Andy was a lap-dog who

could do tax-returns. What a wonderful animal! But by that night in my cell

I felt like a prisoner again. The whole idea seemed absurd, and that mental

image of blue water and white beaches seemed more cruel than foolish -it

dragged at my brain like a fishhook. I just couldn't wear that invisible coat

the way Andy did. I fell asleep that night and dreamed of a great glassy

black stone in the middle of a hayfield; a stone shaped like a giant

blacksmith's anvil. I was trying to rock the stone up so I could get the key

that was underneath. It wouldn't budge; it was just too damned big.

And in the background, but getting closer, I could hear the baying of

bloodhounds. Which leads us, I guess, to the subject of jailbreaks.

Sure, they happen from time to time in our happy little family. You don't

go over the wall, though, not at Shawshank, not if you're smart. The

searchlight beams go all night, probing long white fingers across the open

fields that surround the prison on three sides and the stinking marshland on

the fourth. Cons do go over the wall from time to time, and the searchlights

almost always catch them. If not, they get picked up trying to thumb a ride

on Highway 6 or Highway 99. If they try to cut across country, some farmer

sees them and just phones the location in to the prison. Cons who go over

the wall are stupid cons. Shawshank is no Canon City, but in a rural area a

man humping his ass across country in a grey pyjama suit sticks out like a

cockroach on a wedding cake. Over the years, the guys who have done the

best-maybe oddly, maybe not so oddly-are the guys who did it on the spur

of the moment. Some of them have gone out in the middle of a cartful of

sheets; a convict sandwich on white, you could say. There was a lot of that

when I first came in here, but over the years they have more or less closed

that loophole. Warden Norton's famous 'Inside-Out' program produced its

share of escapees, too. They were the guys who decided they liked what lay

to the right of the hyphen better than what lay to the left And again, in most

cases it was a very casual kind of thing. Drop your blueberry rake and stroll

into the bushes while one of the screws is having a glass of water at the

truck or when a couple of them get too involved in arguing over yards

passing or rushing on the old Boston Patriots.

In 1969, the Inside-Outers were picking potatoes in Sabbatus. It was the

third of November and the work was almost done. There was a guard

named Henry Pugh-and he is no longer a member of our happy little family,

believe me -sitting on the back bumper of one of the potato trucks and

having his lunch with his carbine across his knees when a beautiful (or so it

was told to me, but sometimes these things get exaggerated) ten-point buck

strolled out of the cold early afternoon mist Pugh went after it with visions

of just how that trophy would look mounted in his rec room, and while he

was doing it, three of his charges just walked away. Two were recaptured in

a Lisbon Falls pinball parlour. The third has not been found to this day.

I suppose the most famous case of all was that of Sid Nedeau. This goes

back to 1958, and I guess it will never be topped. Sid was out lining the

ball-field for a Saturday intramural baseball game when the three o'clock

inside whistle blew, signalling the shiftchange for the guards. The parking

lot is just beyond the exercise yard, on the other side of the electrically-

operated main gate. At three the gate opens and the guards coming on duty

and those going off mingle. There's a lot of back-slapping and bullyragging,

comparison of league bowling scores and the usual number of tired old

ethnic jokes.

Sid just trundled his lining machine right out through the gate, leaving a

three-inch baseline all the way from third base in the exercise yard to the

ditch on the far side of Route 6, where they found the machine overturned

in a pile of lime. Don't ask me how he did it He was dressed in his prison

uniform, he stood six-feet-two, and he was billowing clouds of lime-dust

behind him. All I can figure is that, it being Friday afternoon and all, the

guards going off were so happy to be going off, and the guards coming on

were so downhearted to be coming on, that the members of the former

group never got their heads out of the clouds and those in the latter never

got their noses off their shoetops and old Sid Nedeau just sort of slipped

out between the two.

So far as I know, Sid is still at large. Over the years, Andy Dufresne and I

had a good many laughs over Sid Nedeau's great escape, and when we

heard about that airline hijacking for ransom, the one where the guy

parachuted from the back door of the airplane, Andy swore up and down

that D B Cooper's real name was Sid Nedeau. 'And he probably had a

pocketful of baseline lime in his pocket for good luck,' Andy said. 'That

lucky son of a bitch.'

But you should understand that a case like Sid Nedeau, or the fellow who

got away clean from the Sabbatus potato-field crew, guys like that are

winning the prison version of the Irish Sweepstakes. Purely a case of six

different kinds of luck somehow jelling together all at the same moment A

stiff like Andy could wait ninety years and not get a similar break.

Maybe you remember, a ways back, I mentioned a guy named Henley

Backus, the washroom foreman in the laundry. He came to Shawshank in

1922 and died in the prison infirmary thirty-one years later. Escapes and

escape attempts were a hobby of his, maybe because he never quite dared to

take the plunge himself. He could tell you a hundred different schemes, all

of them crackpot, and all of them had been tried in the Shank at one time or

another. My favourite was the tale of Beaver Morrison, a b & e convict who

tried to build a glider from scratch in the plate-factory basement The plans

he was working from were in a circa-1900 book called The Modern Boy's

Guide to Fun and Adventure. Beaver got it built without being discovered,

or so the story goes, only to discover there was no door from the basement

big enough to get the damned thing out When Henley told that story, you

could bust a gut laughing, and he knew a dozen-no, two dozen -just as

funny.

When it came to detailing Shawshank bust-outs, Henley had it down

chapter and verse. He told me once that during his time there had been

better than four hundred escape attempts that he knew of. Really think

about that for a moment before you just nod your head and read on. Four

hundred escape attempts! That comes out to 12.9 escape attempts for every

year Henley Backus was in Shawshank and keeping track of them. The

Escape Attempt of the Month Club. Of course most of them were pretty

slipshod affairs, the sort of thing that ends up with a guard grabbing some

poor, sidling slob's arm and growling, 'Where do you think you're going,

you happy asshole?'

Henley said he'd class maybe sixty of them as more serious attempts, and

he included the 'prison break' of 1937, the year before I arrived at the

Shank. The new administration wing was under construction then and

fourteen cons got out, using construction equipment in a poorly locked

shed. The whole of southern Maine got into a panic over those fourteen

'hardened criminals', most of whom were scared to death and had no more

idea of where they should go than a jackrabbit does when it's headlight-

pinned to the highway with a big truck bearing down on it. Not one of those

fourteen got away. Two of them were shot dead-by civilians, not police

officers or prison personnel -but none got away.

How many had gotten away between 1938, when I came here, and that

day in October when Andy first mentioned Zihuatanejo to me? Putting my

information and Henley's together, I'd say ten. Ten that got away clean. And

although it isn't the kind of thing you can know for sure, I'd guess that at

least half of those ten are doing time in other institutions of lower learning

like the Shank. Because you do get institutionalized. When you take away a

man's freedom and teach him to live in a cell, he seems to lose his ability to

think in dimensions. He's like that jackrabbit I

mentioned, frozen in the oncoming lights of the truck that is bound to kill

it More often than not a con who's just out will pull some dumb job that

hasn't a chance in hell of succeeding and why? Because it'll get him back

inside. Back where he understands how things work.

Andy wasn't that way, but I was. The idea of seeing the Pacific sounded

good, but I was afraid that actually being there would scare me to death-the

bigness of it Anyhow, the day of that conversation about Mexico, and about

Mr Peter Stevens that was the day I began to believe that Andy had some

idea of doing a disappearing act. I hoped to God he would be careful if he

did, and still, I wouldn't have bet money on his chances of succeeding.

Warden Norton, you see, was watching Andy with a special close eye.

Andy wasn't just another deadhead with a number to Norton; they had a

working relationship, you might say. Also, he had brains and he had heart

Norton was determined to use the one and crush the other.

As there are honest politicians on the outside-ones who stay bought-there

are honest prison guards, and if you are a good judge of character and if you

have some loot to spread around, I suppose it's possible that you could buy

enough look-the-other-way to make a break. I'm not the man to tell you

such a thing has never been done, but Andy Dufresne wasn't the man who

could do it Because, as I've said, Norton was watching.

Andy knew it, and the screws knew it, too.

Nobody was going to nominate Andy for the Inside-Out program, not as

long as Warden Norton was evaluating the nominations. And Andy was not

the kind of man to try a casual Sid Nedeau type of escape.

If I had been him, the thought of that key would have tormented me

endlessly. I would have been lucky to get two hours' worth of honest

shuteye a night Buxton was less than thirty miles from Shawshank. So near

and yet so far.

I still thought his best chance was to engage a lawyer and try for the

retrial. Anything to get out from under Norton's thumb. Maybe Tommy

Williams could be shut up by nothing more than a cushy furlough

programme, but I wasn't entirely sure. Maybe a good old Mississippi

hardass lawyer could crack him and maybe that lawyer wouldn't even

have to work that hard. Williams had honestly liked Andy. Every now and

then I'd bring these points up to Andy, who would only smile, his eyes far

away, and say he was thinking about it.

Apparently he'd been thinking about a lot of other things, as well.

In 1975, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank. He hasn't been

recaptured, and I don't think he ever will be. In fact, I don't think Andy

Dufresne even exists anymore. But I think there's a man down in

Zihuatanejo, Mexico named Peter Stevens. Probably running a very new

small hotel in this year of our Lord 1977.

I'll tell you what I know and what I think; that's about all I can do, isn't it?

On 12 March 1975, the cell doors in Cellblock 5 opened at 6.30 a. m., as

they do every morning around here except Sunday. And as they do every

day except Sunday, the inmates of those cells stepped forward into the

corridor and formed two lines as the cell doors slammed shut behind them.

They walked up to the main cellblock gate, where they were counted off by

two guards before being sent on down to the cafeteria for a breakfast of

oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and fatty bacon.

All of this went according to routine until the count at the cellblock gate.

There should have been twenty-nine. Instead, there were twenty-eight.

After a call to the Captain of the Guards, Cellblock 5 was allowed to go to

breakfast.

The Captain of the Guards, a not half-bad fellow named Richard Gonyar,

and his assistant, a jolly prick named Dave Burkes, came down to Cellblock

5 right away.

Gonyar reopened the cell doors and he and Burkes went down the

corridor together, dragging their sticks over the bars, their guns out. In a

case like that what you usually have is someone who has been taken sick in

the night, so sick he can't even step out of his cell in the morning. More

rarely, someone has died or committed suicide.

But this time, they found a mystery instead of a sick man or a dead man.

They found no man at all. There were fourteen cells in Cellblock 5, seven to

a side, all fairly neat-restriction of visiting privileges is the penalty for a

sloppy cell at Shawshank-and all very empty.

Gonyar's first assumption was that there had been a miscount or a

practical joke. So instead of going off to work after breakfast, the inmates

of Cellblock 5 were sent back to their cells, joking and happy. Any break in

the routine was always welcome.

Cell doors opened; prisoners stepped in; cell doors closed. Some clown

shouting, 'I want my lawyer, I want my lawyer, you guys run this place just

like a frigging prison.'

Burkes: 'Shut up in there, or I'll rank you.'

The clown: 'I ranked your wife, Burkie,'

Gonyar: 'Shut up, all of you, or you'll spend the day in there.'

He and Burkes went up the line again, counting noses. They didn't have

to go

far.

'Who belongs in this cell?' Gonyar asked the rightside night guard.

'Andrew Dufresne,' the rightside answered, and that was all it took.

Everything stopped being routine right then. The balloon went up.

In all the prison movies I've seen, this wailing horn goes off when there's

been a break.

That never happens at Shawshank. The first thing Gonyar did was to get

in touch with the warden. The second thing was to get a search of the prison

going. The third was to alert the State Police in Scarborough to the

possibility of a breakout That was the routine. It didn't call for them to

search the suspected escapee's cell, and so no one did. Not then. Why would

they? It was a case of what you see is what you get. It was a small square

room, bars on the window and bars on the sliding door. There was a toilet

and an empty cot. Some pretty rocks on the windowsill.

And the poster, of course. It was Linda Ronstadt by then. The poster was

right over his bunk. There had been a poster there, in that exact same place,

for twenty-six years. And when someone-it was Warden Norton himself, as

it turned out, poetic justice if there ever was any-looked behind it, they got

one hell of a shock.

But that didn't happen until 6.30 that night, almost twelve hours after

Andy had been reported missing, probably twenty hours after he had

actually made his escape.

Norton hit the roof.

I have it on good authority-Chester, the trustee, who was waxing the hall

floor in the Admin Wing that day. He didn't have to polish any keyplates

with his ear that day; he said you could hear the warden clear down to

Records & Files as he chewed on Rich Gonyar's ass.

'What do you mean, you're "satisfied he's not on the prison grounds"?

What does that mean? It means you didn't find him! You better find him!

You better! Because I want him! Do you hear me? I want him!'

Gonyar said something.

'Didn't happen on your shift? That's what you say. So far as I can tell, no

one knows when it happened. Or how. Or if it really did. Now, I want him

in my office by three o'clock this afternoon, or some heads are going to roll.

I can promise you that, and I always keep my promises.'

Something else from Gonyar, something that seemed to provoke Norton

to even greater rage.

'No? Then look at this! Look at this! You recognize it? Last night's tally

for Cellblock 5.

Every prisoner accounted for! Dufresne was locked up last night at nine

and it is impossible for him to be gone now! It is impossible! Now you find

him!"

But at six that evening Andy was still among the missing, Norton himself

stormed down to Cellblock 5, where the rest of us had been locked up all of

that day. Had we been questioned? We had spent most of that long day

being questioned by harried screws who were feeling the breath of the

dragon on the backs of their necks. We all said the same thing: we had seen

nothing, heard nothing. And so far as I know, we were all telling the truth. I

know that I was. All we could say was that Andy had indeed been in his cell

at the time of the lock-in, and at lights-out an hour later.

One wit suggested that Andy had poured himself out through the

keyhole. The suggestion earned the guy four days in solitary. They were

uptight.

So Norton came down-stalked down-glaring at us with blue eyes nearly

hot enough to strike sparks from the tempered steel bars of our cages. He

looked at us as if he believed we were all in on it. Probably he did believe

it.

He went into Andy's cell and looked around. It was just as Andy had left

it, the sheets of his bunk turned back but without looking slept-in. Rocks on

the windowsill but not all of them. The ones he liked best he took with

him.

'Rocks,' Norton hissed, and swept them off the window-ledge with a

clatter. Gonyar, already four hours overtime, winced but said nothing.

Norton's eyes fell on the Linda Ronstadt poster. Linda was looking back

over her shoulder, her hands tucked into the back pockets of a very tight

pair of fawn-coloured slacks. She was wearing a halter and she had a deep

California tan. It must have offended the hell out of Norton's Baptist

sensibilities, that poster. Watching him glare at it, I remembered what Andy

had once said about feeling he could almost step through the picture and be

with the girl.

In a very real way, that was exactly what he did-as Norton was only

seconds from discovering.

'Wretched thing!' he grunted, and ripped the poster from the wall with a

single swipe of his hand.

And revealed the gaping, crumbled hole in the concrete behind it. Gonyar

wouldn't go in.

Norton ordered him-God, they must have heard Norton ordering Rich

Gonyar to go in there all over the prison-and Gonyar just refused him,

point-blank.

'I'll have your job for this!' Norton screamed. He was as hysterical as a

woman having a hot-flash. He had utterly blown his cool. His neck had

turned a rich, dark red, and two veins stood out, throbbing, on his forehead.

'You can count on it, you you Frenchman!

I'll have your job and I'll see to it that you never get another one in any

prison system in New England!'

Gonyar silently held out his service pistol to Norton, butt first. He'd had

enough. He was four hours overtime, going on five, and he'd just had

enough. It was as if Andy's defection from our happy little family had

driven Norton right over the

edge of some private irrationality that had been there for a long time

certainly he was crazy that night.

I don't know what that private irrationality might have been, of course.

But I do know that there were twenty-eight cons listening to Norton's little

dust-up with Rich Gonyar that evening as the last of the light faded from a

dull late winter sky, all of us hard-timers and long-line riders who had seen

the administrators come and go, the hard-asses and the candy-asses alike,

and we all knew that Warden Samuel Norton had just passed what the

engineers like to call 'the breaking strain'.

And by God, it almost seemed to me that somewhere I could heard Andy

Dufresne laughing.

Norton finally got a skinny drink, of water on the night shift to go into

that hole that had been behind Andy's poster of Linda Ronstadt. The skinny

guard's name was Rory Tremont, and he was not exactly a ball of fire in the

brains department. Maybe he thought he was going to win a Bronze Star or

something. As it turned out, it was fortunate that Norton got someone of

Andy's approximate height and build to go in there; if they had sent a big-

assed fellow-as most prison guards seem to be-the guy would have stuck in

there is sure as God made green grass and he might be there still.

Tremont went in with a nylon filament rope, which someone had found in

the trunk of his car, tied around his waist and a big six-battery flashlight in

one hand. By then Gonyar, who had changed his mind about quitting and

who seemed to be the only one there still able to think clearly, had dug out a

set of blueprints. I knew well enough what they showed him- a wall which

looked, in cross-section, like a sandwich. The entire wall was ten feet thick.

The inner and outer sections were each about four feet thick. In the centre

was two feet of pipe-space, and you want to believe that was the meat of the

thing in more ways than one.

Tremont's voice came out of the hole, sounding hollow and dead.

'Something smells awful in here, Warden.'

'Never mind that! Keep going.'

Tremont's lower legs disappeared into the hole. A moment iater his feet

were gone, too.

His light flashed dimly back and forth.

'Warden, it smells pretty damn bad.'

'Never mind, I said!' Norton cried.

Dolorously, Tremont's voice floated back: 'Smells like shit. Oh God,

that's what it is, it's shit, oh my God lemme outta here I'm gonna blow my

groceries oh shit it's shit oh my Gawwwwwd-And then came the

unmistakable sound of Rory Tremont losing his last couple of meals.

Well, that was it for me. I couldn't help myself. The whole day-hell no,

the last thirty years-all came up on me at once and I started laughing fit to

split, a laugh such as I'd never had since I was a free man, the kind of laugh

I never expected to have inside these grey walls. And oh dear God didn't it

feel good!

'Get that man out of here!' Warden Norton was screaming, and I was

laughing so hard I didn't know if he meant me or Tremont I just went on

laughing and kicking my feet and holding onto my belly. I couldn't have

stopped if Norton had threatened to shoot me dead-bang on the spot. 'Get

him OUT!'

Well, friends and neighbours, I was the one who went Straight down to

solitary, and there I stayed for fifteen days. A long shot. But every now and

then I'd think about poor old not-too-bright Rory Tremont bellowing oh shit

it's shit, and then I'd think about Andy Dufresne heading south in his own

car, dressed in a nice suit,

and I'd just have to laugh. I did that fifteen days in solitary practically

standing on my head Maybe because half of me was with Andy Dufresne,

Andy Dufresne who had waded in shit and came out clean on the other side,

Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific.

I heard the rest of what went on that night from half a dozen sources.

There wasn't all that much, anyway. I guess that Rory Tremont decided he

didn't have much left to lose after he'd lost his lunch and dinner, because he

did go on. There was no danger of falling down the pipe-shaft between the

inner and outer segments of the cellblock wall; it was so narrow that

Tremont actually had to wedge himself down. He said later that he could

only take half-breaths and that he knew what it would be like to be buried

alive.

What he found at the bottom of the shaft was a master sewer-pipe which

served the fourteen toilets in Cellblock 5, a porcelain pipe that had been laid

thirty-three years before. It had been broken into. Beside the jagged hole in

the pipe, Tremont found Andy's rock-hammer.

Andy had gotten free, but it hadn't been easy.

The pipe was even narrower than the shaft Tremont had just descended; it

had a two-foot bore. Rory Tremont didn't go in, and so far as I know, no one

else did, either. It must have been damn near unspeakable. A rat jumped out

of the pipe as Tremont was examining the hole and the rock-hammer, and

he swore later that it was nearly as big as a cocker spaniel pup. He went

back up the crawlspace to Andy's cell like a monkey on a stick.

Andy had gone into that pipe. Maybe he knew that it emptied into a

stream five hundred yards beyond the prison on the marshy western side. I

think he did. The prison blueprints were around, and Andy would have

found a way to look at them. He was a methodical cuss. He would have

known or found out that the sewerpipe running out of Cellblock 5 was the

last one in Shawshank not hooked into the new waste-treatment plant, and

he would have known it was do it by mid-1975 or do it never, because in

August they were going to switch us over to the new waste-treatment plant,

too.

Five hundred yards. The length of five football fields. Just shy of a mile.

He crawled that distance, maybe with one of those small Penlites in his

hand, maybe with nothing but a couple of books of matches. He crawled

through foulness that I either can't imagine or don't want to imagine. Maybe

the rats scattered in front of him, or maybe they went for him the way such

animals sometimes will when they've had a chance to grow bold in the dark.

He must have had just enough clearance at the shoulders to keep moving,

and he probably had to shove himself through the places where the lengths

of pipe were joined.

If it had been me, the claustrophobia would have driven me mad a dozen

times over. But he did it At the far end of the pipe they found a set of

muddy footprints leading out of the sluggish, polluted creek the pipe fed

into. Two miles from there a search party found his prison uniform-that was

a day later.

The story broke big in the papers, as you might guess, but no one within

a fifteen-mile radius of the prison stepped forward to report a stolen car,

stolen clothes, or a naked man in the moonlight There was not so much as a

barking dog in a farmyard. He came out of the sewerpipe and he

disappeared like smoke.

But I am betting he disappeared in the direction of Buxton.

Three months after that memorable day, Warden Norton resigned. He was

a broken man, it gives me great pleasure to report. The spring was gone

from his step. On his last day he shuffled out with his head down like an old

con shuffling down to

the infirmary for his codeine pills. It was Gonyar who took over, and to

Norton that must have seemed like the unkindest cut of all. For all I know,

Sam Norton is down there in Eliot now, attending services at the Baptist

church every Sunday, and wondering how the hell Andy Dufresne ever

could have gotten the better of him.

I could have told him; the answer to the question is simplicity itself.

Some have got it, Sam. And some don't, and never will.

That's what I know; now I'm going to tell you what I think. I may have it

wrong on some of the specifics, but I'd be willing to bet my watch and

chain that I've got the general outline down pretty well. Because, with Andy

being the sort of man that he was, there's only one or two ways that it could

have been. And every now and then, when I think it out, I think of

Normaden, that half-crazy Indian. 'Nice fella,' Normaden had said after

celling with Andy for six or eight months. 'I was glad to go, me. All the

time cold. He don't let nobody touch his things. That's okay. Nice man,

never make fun. But big draught.' Poor crazy Normaden. He knew more

than all the rest of us, and he knew it sooner. And it was eight long months

before Andy could get him out of there and have the cell to himself again. If

it hadn't been for the eight months Normaden had spent with him after

Warden Norton first came in, I do believe that Andy would have been free

before Nixon resigned.

I believe now that it began in 1949, way back then-not with the rock-

hammer, but with the Rita Hayworth poster. I told you how nervous he

seemed when he asked for that, nervous and filled with suppressed

excitement. At the time I thought it was just embarrassment, that Andy was

the sort of guy who'd never want someone else to know that he had feet of

clay and wanted a woman even if it was only a fantasy-woman. But I

think now that I was wrong. I think now that Andy's excitement came from

something else altogether.

What was responsible for the hole that Warden Norton eventually found

behind the poster of a girl that hadn't even been born when that photo of

Rita Hayworth was taken?

Andy Dufresne's perseverance and hard work, yeah- I don't take any of

that away from him. But there were two other elements in the equation: a

lot of luck, and WPA concrete.

You don't need me to explain the luck, I guess. The WPA concrete I

checked out for myself. I invested some time and a couple of stamps and

wrote first to the University of Maine History Department and then to a

fellow whose address they were able to give me.

This fellow had been foreman of the WPA project that built the

Shawshank Max Security Wing.

The wing, which contains Cellblocks 3, 4, and 5, was built in the years

193437. Now, most people don't think of cement and concrete as

'technological developments', the way we think of cars and oil furnaces and

rocket-ships, but they really are. There was no modern cement until 1870 or

so, and no modern concrete until after the turn of the century. Mixing

concrete is as delicate a business as making bread. You can get it too watery

or not watery enough. You can get the sand-mix too thick or too thin, and

the same is true of the gravel-mix. And back in 1934, the science of mixing

the stuff was a lot less sophisticated than it is today.

The walls of Cellblock 5 were solid enough, but they weren't exactly dry

and toasty. As a matter of fact, they were and are pretty damned dank. After

a long wet spell they would sweat and sometimes even drip. Cracks had a

way of appearing, some an inch deep, and were routinely mortared over.

Now here comes Andy Dufresne into Cellblock 5. He's a man who

graduated from the University of Maine's school of business, but he's also a

man who took two or three geology courses along the way. Geology had, in

fact, become his chief hobby. I imagine it appealed to his patient,

meticulous nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A million years of

mountain-building there. Tectonic plates grinding against each other deep

under the earth's skin over the millennia. Pressure. Andy told me once that

all of geology is the study of pressure.

And time, of course.

He had time to study those walls. Plenty of time. When the cell door

slams and the lights go out, there's nothing else to look at.

First-timers usually had a hard time adjusting to the confinement of

prison life. They get screw-fever, they have to be hauled down to the

infirmary and sedated couple of times before they get on the beam. It's not

unusual to hear some new member of our happy little family bang on the

bars of his cell and screaming to be let out before the cries have gone on

for long, the chant starts up along the cellblock: 'Fresh fish, hey little fishie,

fresh fish, fresh fish, got fresh fish today!'

Andy didn't flip out like that when he came to the Shank in 1948, but

that's not to say that he didn't feel many of same things. He may have come

close to madness; some and some go sailing right over the edge. Old life

blown away in the wink of an eye, indeterminate nightmare stretching out

ahead, a long season in hell.

So what did he do, I ask you? He searched almost desperately for

something to divert his restless mind. Oh. There are all sorts of ways to

divert yourself, even in prison; it seems like the human mind is full of an

infinite number of possibilities when it comes to diversion. I told you about

the sculptor and his Three Ages of Jesus. There were coin collectors who

were always losing their collections to thieves, stamp collectors, one fellow

who had postcards from thirty-five different countries-and let me tell you,

he would have turned out your lights if he'd caught you diddling with his

postcards.

Andy got interested in rocks. And the walls of his cell.

I think that his initial intention might have been to do no more than to

carve his initials into the wall where the poster of Rita Hayworth would

soon be hanging. His initials, or maybe a few lines from some poem.

Instead, what he found was that interestingly weak concrete. Maybe he

started to carve his initials and a big chunk of the wall fell out I can see

him, lying there on his bunk, looking at that broken chunk of concrete,

turning it over in his hands. Never mind the wreck of your whole life, never

mind that you got railroaded into this place by a whole trainload of bad

luck. Let's forget all that and look at this piece of concrete. Some months

further along he might have decided it would be fun to see how much of

that wall he could take out. But you can't just start digging into your wall

and then, when the weekly inspection (or one of the surprise inspections

that are always turning up interesting caches of booze, drugs, dirty pictures,

and weapons) comes around, say to the guard: This? Just excavating a little

hole in my cell wall. Not to worry, my good man.'

No, he couldn't have that. So he came to me and asked if I could get him

a Rita Hayworth poster. Not a little one but a big one.

And, of course, he had the rock-hammer. I remember thinking when I got

him that gadget back in '48 that it would take a man six hundred years to

burrow through the wall with it. True enough. But Andy went right through

the wall -even with the soft concrete, it took him two rock-hammers and

twenty-seven years to hack a hole big enough to get his slim body through

four feet of it Of course he lost most of one of those years to Normaden,

and he could only work at night, preferably late at night, when almost

everybody is asleep-including the guards who work the night shift. But I

suspect the thing which slowed him down the most was getting rid of the

wall as he took it out He could muffle the sound of his work by wrapping

the head of his hammer in rock-polishing cloths, but what to do with the

pulverized concrete and the occasional chunks that came out whole? I think

he must have broken up the chunks into pebbles and

I remembered the Sunday after I had gotten him the rock-hammer. I

remember watching him walk across the exercise yard, his face puffy from

his latest go-round with the sisters. I saw him stoop, pick up a pebble and

it disappeared up his sleeve. That inside sleeve-pocket is an old prison trick.

Up your sleeve or just inside the cuff of your pants. And I have another

memory, very strong but unfocused, maybe something I saw more than

once. This memory is of Andy Dufresne walking across the exercise yard

on a hot summer day when the air was utterly still. Still, yeah except for

the little breeze that seemed to be blowing sand around Andy Dufresne's

feet.

So maybe he had a couple of cheaters in his pants below the knees. You

loaded the cheaters up with fill and then just strolled around, your hands in

your pockets, and when you feel safe and unobserved, you gave the pockets

a little twitch. The pockets, of course, are attached by string or strong thread

to the cheaters. The fill goes cascading out of your pantslegs as you walk.

The World War II POWS who were trying to tunnel out used the dodge.

The years went past and Andy brought his wall out to the exercise yard

cupful by cupful. He played the game with administrator after

administrator, and they thought it was because he wanted to keep the library

growing. I have no doubt that was part of it, but the main thing Andy

wanted was to keep cell 14 in Cellblock 5 a single occupancy. I doubt if he

had any real plans or hopes of breaking out, at least not at first. He probably

assumed the wall was ten feet of solid concrete, and that if he succeeded in

boring all the way through it, he'd come out thirty feet over the exercise

yard. But like I say, I don't think he was worried overmuch about breaking

through. His assumption could have run this way: I'm only making a foot of

progress every seven years or so; therefore, it would take me seventy years

to break through; that would make me one hundred and seven years old.

Here's a second assumption I would have made, had I been Andy: that

eventually I would be caught and get a lot of solitary time, not to mention a

very large black mark on my record. After all, there was the regular weekly

inspection and a surprise toss-which usually came at night-every second

week or so. He must have decided that things couldn't go on for long.

Sooner or later, some screw was going to peek behind Rita Hayworth just to

make sure Andy didn't have a sharpened spoon-handle or some marijuana

reefers Scotch-taped to the wall.

And his response to that second assumption must have been to hell with

it. Maybe he even made a game out of it. How far in can I get before they

find out? Prison is a goddam boring place, and the chance or being

surprised by an unscheduled inspection in the middle of the night while he

had his poster unstuck probably added some spice to his life during the

early years.

And I do believe it would have been impossible for him to get away just

on dumb luck. Not for twenty-seven years. Nevertheless, I have to believe

that for the first two years -until mid-May of 1950, when he helped Byron

Hadley get around the tax on his windfall inheritance-that's exactly what he

did get by on.

Or maybe he had something more than dumb luck going for him even

back then. He had money, and he might have been slipping someone a little

squeeze every

week to take it easy on him. Most guards will go along with that if the

price is right; it's money in their pockets and the prisoner gets to keep his

whack-off pictures or his tailormade cigarettes. Also, Andy was a model

prisoner-quiet, well-spoken, respectful, non-violent. It's the crazies and the

stampeders that get their cells turned upside-down at least once every six

months, their mattresses unzipped, their pillows taken away and cut open,

the outflow pipe from their toilets carefully probed.

Then, in 1950, Andy became something more than a model prisoner. In

1950, he became a valuable commodity, a murderer who did tax returns as

well as H & R Block. He gave gratis estate-planning advice, set up tax-

shelters, filled out loan applications (sometimes creatively). I can remember

him sitting behind his desk in the library, patiently going over a car-loan

agreement paragraph by paragraph with a screwhead who wanted to buy a

used DeSoto, telling the guy what was good about the agreement and what

was bad about it, explaining to him that it was possible to shop for a loan

and not get hit quite so bad, steering him away from the finance companies

which in those days were sometimes little better than legal loan-sharks.

When he'd finished, the screwhead started to put out his hand and then

drew it back to himself quickly. He'd forgotten for a moment, you see, that

he was dealing with a mascot, not a man.

Andy kept up on the tax laws and the changes in the stock market, and so

his usefulness didn't end after he'd been in cold storage for a while, as it

might have done. He began to get his library money, his running war with

the sisters had ended, and nobody tossed his cell very hard. He was a good

nigger.

Then one day, very late in the going-perhaps around October of 1967-the

long-time hobby suddenly turned into something else. One night while he

was in the hole up to his waist with Raquel Welch hanging down over his

ass, the pick end of his rock-hammer must have suddenly sunk into concrete

past the hilt.

He would have dragged some chunks of concrete back, but maybe he

heard others falling down into that shaft, bouncing back and forth, clinking

off that standpipe. Did he know by then that he was going to come upon

that shaft, or was he totally surprised? I don't know. He might have seen the

prison blueprints by then or he might not have. If not, you can be damned

sure he found a way to look at them not long after. All at once he must have

realized that, instead of just playing a game, he was playing for high

stakes in terms of his own life and his own future, the highest. Even then

he couldn't have known for sure, but he must have had a pretty good idea

because it was right around then that he talked to me about Zihuatanejo for

the first time. All of a sudden, instead of just being a toy, that stupid hole in

the wall became his master-if he knew about the sewer-pipe at the bottom,

and that it led under the outer wall, it did, anyway.

He'd had the key under the rock in Buxton to worry about for years. Now

he had to worry that some eager-beaver new guard would look behind his

poster and expose the whole thing, or that he would get another cellmate, or

that he would, after all those years, suddenly be transferred. He had all

those things on his mind for the next seven years. All I can say is that he

must have been one of the coolest men who ever lived. I would have gone

completely nuts after a while, living with all that uncertainty. But Andy just

went on playing the game.

He had to carry the possibility of discovery for another eight years-the

probability of it, you might say, because no matter how carefully he stacked

the cards in his favour, as an inmate of a state prison, he just didn't have that

many to stack and the gods had been kind to him for a very long time;

some eighteen years.

The most ghastly irony I can think of would have been if he had been

offered a parole. Can you imagine it? Three days before the parolee is

actually released, he is transferred into the light security wing to undergo a

complete physical and a battery of vocational tests. While he's there, his old

cell is completely cleaned out. Instead of getting his parole, Andy would

have gotten a long turn downstairs in solitary, followed by some more time

upstairs but in a different cell.

If he broke into the shaft in 1967, how come he didn't escape until 1975?

I don't know for sure-but I can advance some pretty good guesses. First, he

would have become more careful than ever. He was too smart to just push

ahead at flank speed and try to get out in eight months, or even in eighteen.

He must have gone on widening the opening on the crawlspace a little at a

time. A hole as big as a teacup by the time he took his New Year's Eve

drink that year. A hole as big as a dinner-plate by the time he took his

birthday drink in 1968. As big as a serving-tray by the time the 1969

baseball season opened.

For a time I thought it should have gone much faster than it apparently

did-after he broke through, I mean. It seemed to me that, instead of having

to pulverize the crap and take it out of his cell in the cheater gadgets I have

described, he could simply let it drop down the shaft. The length of time he

took makes me believe that he didn't dare do that. He might have decided

that the noise would arouse someone's suspicions. Or, if he knew about the

sewer-pipe, as I believe he must have, he would have been afraid that a

falling chunk of concrete would break it before he was ready, screwing up

the cellblock sewage system and leading to an investigation. And an

investigation, needless to say, would lead to ruin.

Still and all, I'd guess that, by the time Nixon was sworn in for his second

term, the hole would have been wide enough for him to wriggle through

and probably sooner than that Andy was a small guy. Why didn't he go

then?

That's where my educated guesses run out, folks; from this point they

become progressively wilder. One possibility is that the crawlspace itself

was clogged with crap and he had to clear it out But that wouldn't account

for all the time. So what was it? I think that maybe Andy got scared.

I've told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutional man. At first

you can't stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then

you get so you accept them and then, as your body and your mind and

your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them. You are told

when to eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke. If you're at

work in the laundry or the plate-shop, you're assigned five minutes of each

hour when you can go to the bathroom. For thirty-five years, my time was

twenty-five minutes after the hour, and after thirty-five years, that's the only

time I ever felt the need to take a piss or have a crap: twenty-five minutes

past the hour. And if for some reason I couldn't go, the need would pass at

thirty after, and come back at twenty-five past the next hour.

I think Andy may have been wrestling with that tiger-that institutional

syndrome-and also with the bulking fears that all of it might have been for

nothing. How many nights must he have lain awake under his poster,

thinking about that sewer line, knowing that the one chance was all he'd

ever get? The blueprints might have told him how big the pipe's bore was,

but a blueprint couldn't tell him what it would be like inside that pipe-if he

would be able to breathe without choking, if the rats were big enough and

mean enough to fight instead of retreating and a blueprint couldn't've told

him what he'd find at the end of the pipe, when and if he got there. Here's a

joke even funnier than the parole would have been: Andy breaks into the

sewer line, crawls through five hundred yards of choking, shit-smelling

darkness, and comes up against a heavy-gauge mesh screen at the end of it

all. Ha, ha, very funny.

That would have been on his mind. And if the long shot actually came in

and he was able to get out, would he be able to get some civilian clothes

and get away from the vicinity of the prison undetected? Last of all,

suppose he got out of the pipe, got away from Shawshank before the alarm

was raised, got to Buxton, overturned the right rock and found nothing

beneath? Not necessarily something so dramatic as arriving at the right field

and discovering that a high-rise apartment building had been erected on the

spot, or that it had turned into a supermarket parking lot. It could have been

that some little kid who liked rocks noticed that piece of volcanic glass,

turned it over, saw the deposit-box key, and took both it and the rock back

to his room as souvenirs. Maybe a November hunter kicked the rock, left

the key exposed, and a squirrel or a crow with a liking for bright shiny

things had taken it away. Maybe there had been spring floods one year,

breaching the wall, washing the key away. Maybe anything.

So I think-wild guess or not-that Andy just froze in place for a while.

After all, you can't lose if you don't bet. What did he have to lose, you ask?

His library, for one thing. The poison peace of institutional life, for another.

Any future chance to grab his safe identity. But he finally did it, just as I

have told you. He tried and, my! Didn't he succeed in spectacular fashion?

You tell me!

But did he get away, you ask? What happened after? What happened

when he got to that meadow and turned over the rock always assuming the

rock was still there?

I can't describe that scene for you, because this institutional man is still in

this institution, and expects to be for years to come.

But I'll tell you this. Very late in the summer of 1975, on 15 September to

be exact, I got a postcard which had been mailed from the tiny town of

McNary, Texas. That town is on the American side of the border, directly

across from El Porvenir. The message side of the card was totally blank.

But I know. I know it in my heart as surely as I know that we're all going to

die someday.

McNary was where he crossed. McNary, Texas.

So that's my story, Jack. I never believed how long it would take to write

it all down, or how many pages it would take. I started writing just after I

got that postcard, and here I am finishing up on 14 January 1976. I've used

three pencils right down to knuckle-stubs, and a whole tablet of paper. I've

kept the pages carefully hidden not that many could read my. hen-tracks,

anyway.

It stirred up more memories than I ever would have believed. Writing

about yourself seems to be a lot like sticking a branch into clear river-water

and roiling up the muddy bottom.

Well, you weren't writing about yourself, I hear someone in the peanut-

gallery saying. You were writing about Andy Dufresne. You're nothing but

a minor character in your own story. But you know, that's just not so. It's all

about me, every damned word of it Andy was the part of me they could

never lock up, the part of me that will rejoice when the gates finally open

for me and I walk out in my cheap suit with my twenty dollars of mad-

money in my pocket That part of me will rejoice no matter how old and

broken and scared the rest of me is. I guess it's just that Andy had more of

that part than me, and used it better.

There are others here like me, others who remember Andy. We're glad

he's gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's

all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let

them go, or when

you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the

part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place

rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and

empty for their departure.

That's the story and I'm glad I told it, even if it is a bit inconclusive and

even though some of the memories the pencil prodded up (like that branch

poking up the river-mud) made me feel a little sad and even older than I am.

Thank you for listening. And Andy: If you're really down there, as I believe

you are, look at the stars for me just after sunset, and touch the sand, and

wade in the water, and feel free.

I never expected to take up this narrative again, but here I am with the

dogeared, folded pages open on the desk in front of me. Here I am adding

another three or four pages, writing in a brand-new tablet. A tablet I bought

in a store- I just walked into a store on Portland's Congress Street and

bought it.

I thought I had put finish to my story in a Shawshank prison cell on a

bleak January day in 1976. Now it's late June of 1977 and I am sitting in a

small, cheap room of the Brewster Hotel in Portland, adding to it The

window is open, and the sound of the traffic floating in seems huge,

exciting, and intimidating. I have to look constantly over at the window and

reassure myself that there are no bars on it I sleep poorly at night because

the bed in this room, as cheap as the room is, seems much too big and

luxurious. I snap awake every morning promptly at six-thirty, feeling

disorientated and frightened. My dreams are bad. I have a crazy feeling of

free fall. The sensation is as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

What has happened in my life? Can't you guess? I was paroled. After

thirty-eight years of routine hearings and routine details (in the course of

those thirty-eight years, three lawyers died on me), my parole was granted. I

suppose they decided that, at the age of fifty-eight, I was finally used up

enough to be deemed safe.

I came very close to burning the document you have just read. They

search outgoing parolees just as carefully as they search incoming 'new

fish'. And beyond containing enough dynamite to assure me of a quick

turnaround and another six or eight years inside, my 'memoirs' contained

something else: the name of the town where I believe Andy Dufresne to be.

Mexican police gladly cooperate with the American police, and I didn't

want my freedom-or my unwillingness to give up the story I'd worked so

long and hard to write-to cost Andy his.

Then I remembered how Andy had brought in his five hundred dollars

back in 1948, and I took out my story of him the same way. Just to be on

the safe side, I carefully rewrote each page which mentioned Zihuatanejo. If

the papers had been found during my 'outside search', as they call it at the

Shank, I would have gone back in on turnaround but the cops would have

been looking for Andy in a Peruvian seacoast town named Las Intrudres.

The Parole Committee got me a job as a 'stock-room assistant' at the big

FoodWay Market at the Spruce Mall in South Portland-which means I

became just one more ageing bag-boy. There's only two kinds of bag-boys,

you know; the old ones and the young ones. No one ever looks at either

kind. If you shop at the Spruce Mall FoodWay, I may have even taken your

groceries out to your car but you'd have had to have shopped there

between March and April of 1977, because that's as long as I worked there.

At first I didn't think I was going to be able to make it on the outside at all.

I've described prison society as a scaled-down model of your outside world,

but I had no idea of how fast things moved on the outside; the raw speed

people move at. They even talk faster. And louder.

It was the toughest adjustment I've ever had to make, and I haven't

finished making it yet not by a long way. Women, for instance. After

hardly knowing that

they were half of the human race for forty years, I was suddenly working

in a store filled with them. Old women, pregnant women wearing T-shirts

with arrows pointing downward and the printed motto reading BABY

HERE, skinny women with their nipples poking out of their shirts- a

woman wearing something like that when I went in would have gotten

arrested and then had a sanity hearing-women of every shape and size. I

found myself going around with a semi-hard almost all the time and cursing

myself for being a dirty old man. Going to the bathroom, that was another

thing. When I had to go (and the urge always came on me at twenty-five

past the hour), I had to fight the almost overwhelming need to check it with

my boss. Knowing that was something I could just go and do in this too-

bright outside world was one thing; adjusting my inner self to that

knowledge after all those years of checking it with the nearest screwhead or

facing two days in solitary for the oversight that was something else.

My boss didn't like me. He was a young guy, twenty-six or -seven, and I

could see that I sort of disgusted him, the way a cringing, servile old dog

that crawls up to you on its belly to be petted will disgust a man. Christ, I

disgusted myself. But I couldn't make myself stop. I wanted to tell him,

That's what a whole life in prison does for you, young man. It turns

everyone in a position of authority into a master, and you into every

master's dog. Maybe you know you've become a dog, even in prison, but

since everyone else in grey is a dog, too, it doesn't seem to matter so much.

Outside, it does. But I couldn't tell a young guy like him. He would never

understand. Neither would my P. O., a big, bluff ex-Navy man with a huge

red beard and a large stock of Polish jokes. He saw me for about five

minutes every week. 'Are you staying out of the bars, Red?' he'd ask when

he'd run out of Polish jokes. I'd say yeah, and that would be the end of it

until next week.

Music on the radio. When I went in, the big bands were just getting up a

good head of steam. Now every song sounds like it's about fucking. So

many cars. At first I felt like I was taking my life into my hands every time

I crossed the street. There was more-everything was strange and frightening

-but maybe you get the idea, or can at least grasp a corner of it I began to

think about doing something to get back in. When you're on parole, almost

anything will serve. I'm ashamed to say it, but I began to think about

stealing some money or shoplifting stuff from the FoodWay, anything, to

get back in where it was quiet and you knew everything that was going to

come up in the course of the day.

If I had never known Andy, I probably would have done that. But I kept

thinking of him, spending all those years chipping patiently away at the

cement with his rock-hammer so he could be free. I thought of that and it

made me ashamed and I'd drop the idea again. Oh, you can say he had more

reason to be free than I did-he had a new identity and a lot of money. But

that's not really true, you know. Because he didn't know for sure that the

new identity was still there, and without the new identity, the money would

always be out of reach. No, what he needed was just to be free, and if I

kicked away what I had, it would be like spitting in the face of everything

he had worked so hard to win back. So what I started to do on my time off

was to hitchhike a ride down to the little town of Buxton. This was in the

early April of 1977, the snow just starting to melt off the fields, the air just

beginning to be warm, the baseball teams coming north to start a new

season playing the only game I'm sure God approves of. When I went on

these trips, I carried a Silva compass in my pocket.

There's a big hayfield in Buxton, Andy had said, and at the north end of

that hayfield there's a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And

somewhere along the base of that wall is a rock that has no earthly business

in a Maine hayfield. A

fool's errand, you say. How many hayfields are there in a small rural

town like Buxton? Fifty? A hundred? Speaking from personal experience,

I'd put it at even higher than that, if you add in the fields now cultivated

which might have been haygrass when Andy went in. And if I did find the

right one, I might never know it Because I might overlook that black piece

of volcanic glass, or, much more likely, Andy put it into his pocket and took

it with him. So I'd agree with you. A fool's errand, no doubt about it. Worse,

a dangerous one for a man on parole, because some of those fields were

clearly marked with NO TRESPASSING signs. And, as I've said, they're

more than happy to slam your ass back inside if you get out of line. A fool's

errand but so is chipping at a blank concrete wall for twenty-eight years.

And when you're no longer the man who can get it for you and just an old

bag-boy, it's nice to have a hobby to take your mind off your new life. My

hobby was looking for Andy's rock.

So I'd hitchhike to Buxton and walk the roads. I'd listen to the birds, to

the spring runoff in the culverts, examine the bottles the retreating snows

had revealed-all useless non-returnables, I am sorry to say; the world seems

to have gotten awfully spendthrift since I went into the slam-and looking

for hayfields.

Most of them could be eliminated right off. No rock walls. Others had

rock walls, but my compass told me they were facing the wrong direction. I

walked these wrong ones anyway. It was a comfortable thing to be doing,

and on those outings I really felt free, at peace. An old dog walked with me

one Saturday. And one day I saw a winter-skinny deer.

Then came 23 April, a day I'll not forget even if I live another fifty-eight

years. It was a balmy Saturday afternoon, and I was walking up what a little

boy fishing from a bridge told me was called The Old Smith Road. I had

taken a lunch in a brown FoodWay bag, and had eaten it sitting on a rock by

the road. When I was done I carefully buried my leavings, as my dad had

taught me before he died, when I was a sprat no older than the fisherman

who had named the road for me.

Around two o'clock I came to a big field on my left. There was a stone

wall at the far end of it, running roughly northwest I walked back to it,

squelching over the wet ground, and began to walk the wall. A squirrel

scolded me from an oak tree. Three-quarters of the way to the end, I saw the

rock. No mistake. Black glass and as smooth as silk. A rock with no earthly

business in a Maine hayfield. For a long time I just looked at it, feeling that

I might cry, for whatever reason. The squirrel had followed me, and it was

still chattering away. My heart was beating madly.

When I felt I had myself under control, I went to the rock, squatted

beside it-the joints in my knees went off like a double-barrelled shotgun-

and let my hand touch it. It was real. I didn't pick it up because I thought

there would be anything under it; I could just as easily have walked away

without finding what was beneath. I certainly had no plans to take it away

with me, because I didn't feel it was mine to take- I had a feeling that taking

that rock from the field would have been the worst kind of theft. No, I only

picked it up to feel it better, to get the heft of the thing, and, I suppose, to

prove its reality by feeling its satiny texture against my skin.

I had to look at what was underneath for a long time. My eyes saw it, but

it took a while for my mind to catch up. It was an envelope, carefully

wrapped in a plastic bag to keep away the damp. My name was written

across the front in Andy's clear script. I took the envelope and left the rock

where Andy had left it, and Andy's friend before him.

Dear Red,

If you're reading this, then you're out. One way or another, you're out.

And If you've followed along this far, you might be willing to come a little

further. I think you remember the name of the town, don't you? I could use a

good man to help me get my project on wheels.

Meantime, have a drink on me-and do think it over. I will be keeping an

eye out for you.

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and

no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds

you well.

Your friend, Peter Stevens

I didn't read that letter in the field. A kind of terror had come over me, a

need to get away from there before I was seen. To make what may be an

appropriate pun, I was in terror of being apprehended.

I went back to my room and read it there, with the smell of old men's

dinners drifting up the stairwell to me-Beefaroni, Ricearoni, Noodleroni.

You can bet that whatever the old folks of America, the ones on fixed

incomes, are eating tonight, it almost certainly ends in roni.

I opened the envelope and read the letter and then I put my head in my

arms and cried.

With the letter there were twenty new fifty-dollar bills.

And here I am in the Brewster Hotel, technically a fugitive from justice

again-parole violation is my crime. No one's going to throw up any

roadblocks to catch a criminal wanted on that charge, I guess-wondering

what I should do now.

I have this manuscript I have a small piece of luggage about the size of a

doctor's bag that holds everything I own. I have nineteen fifties, four tens, a

five, three ones, and assorted change. I broke one of the fifties to buy this

tablet of paper and a deck of smokes.

Wondering what I should do.

But there's really no question. It always comes down to just two choices.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

First I'm going to put this manuscript back in my bag. Then I'm going to

buckle it up, grab my coat, go downstairs, and check out of this fleabag.

Then I'm going to walk uptown to a bar and put that five dollar bill down in

front of the bartender and ask him to bring me two straight shots of Jack

Daniels-one for me and one for Andy Dufresne.

Other than a beer or two, they'll be the first drinks I've taken as a free

man since 1938.

Then I am going to tip the bartender a dollar and thank him kindly. I will

leave the bar and walk up Spring Street to the Greyhound terminal there and

buy a bus ticket to El Paso by way of New York City. When I get to El

Paso, I'm going to buy a ticket to McNary. And when I get to McNary, I

guess I'll have a chance to find out if an old crook like me can find a way to

float across the border and into Mexico.

Sure I remember the name. Zihuatanejo. A name like that is just too

pretty to forget I find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in

my trembling hand. I think it is the excitement that only a free man can feel,

a free man starting a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.

I hope Andy is down there.

I hope I can make it across the border.

I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

APT PUPIL

He looked like the total all-American kid as he pedalled his twenty-six-

inch Schwinn with the ape-hanger handlebars up the residential suburban

street, and that's just what he was: Todd Bowden, thirteen years old, five-

feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the colour of

ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly tanned skin marred by not

even the first shadow of adolescent acne.

He was smiling a summer vacation smile as he pedalled through the sun

and shade three blocks from his own house. He looked like the kind of kid

who might have a paper route, and as a matter of fact, he did-he delivered

the Santa Donato Clarion. He also looked like the kind of kid who might

sell greeting cards for premiums, and he had done that, too. They were the

kind that come with your name printed inside-JACK AND MARY BURKE,

or DON AND SALLY, or THE MURCHISONS. He looked like the sort of

boy who might whistle while he worked, and he often did so. He whistled

quite prettily, in fact. His dad was an architectural engineer who made

$40,000 a year. His mom was a housewife and a secretarial school graduate

(she had met Todd's father one day when he needed a secretary from the

pool) who typed manuscripts in her spare time. She had kept all of Todd's

old school report cards in a folder. Her favourite was his final fourth-grade

card, on which Mrs Upshaw had scratched: 'Todd is an extremely apt pupil.'

He was, too. Straight As and Bs all the way up the line. If he'd done any

better-straight As, for example-his friends might have begun to think he was

weird.

Now he brought his bike to a halt in front of 963 Claremont Street and

stepped off it. The house was a small bungalow set discreetly back on its

lot. It was white with green shutters and green trim. A hedge ran around the

front The hedge was well-watered and well-clipped.

Todd brushed his blond hair out of his eyes and walked the Schwinn up

the cement path to the steps. He was still smiling, and his smile was open

and expectant and beautiful, a marvel of modern dentistry and fluoridated

water. He pushed down the bike's kickstand with the toe of one Nike

running-shoe and then picked the folded newspaper off the bottom step. It

wasn't the Clarion; it was the LA Times. He put it under his arm and

mounted the steps. At the top was a heavy wooden door with no window

inside of a latched screen door. There was a doorbell on the right-hand

doorframe, and below the bell were two small signs, each neatly screwed

into the wood and covered with protective plastic so they wouldn't yellow

or waterspot. German efficiency, Todd thought, and his smile widened a

little. It was an adult thought, and he always mentally congratulated himself

when he had one of those. The top sign said ARTHUR DENKER.

The bottom one said NO SOLICITORS, NO PEDDLERS, NO

SALESMEN. Smiling still, Todd rang the bell.

He could barely hear its muted burring, somewhere far off inside the

small house. He took his finger off the bell and cocked his head a little,

listening for footsteps. There were none. He looked at his Timex watch (one

of the premiums he had gotten for selling personalized greeting cards) and

saw that it was twelve past ten. The guy should be up by now. Todd himself

was always up by seven-thirty at the latest, even during summer vacation.

The early bird catches the worm. He listened for another thirty seconds and

when the house remained silent he leaned on the bell,

watching the sweep second hand on his Timex as he did so. He had been

pressing the doorbell for exactly seventy-one seconds when he finally heard

shuffling footsteps. Slippers, he deduced from the soft wish-wish sound.

Todd was into deductions. His current ambition was to become a private

detective when he grew up. 'All right! All right!' the man who was

pretending to be Arthur Denker called querulously. 'I'm coming! Let it go!

I'm coming!'

Todd stopped pushing the doorbell button. He looked at the tip of his

forefinger. There was a small red circle there.

A chain and bolt rattled on the far side of the windowless inner door.

Then it was pulled open.

An old man, hunched inside a bathrobe, stood looking out through the

screen. A cigarette smouldered between his fingers. Todd thought the man

looked like a cross between Albert Einstein and Boris Karloff. His hair was

long and white but beginning to yellow in an unpleasant way that was '

more nicotine than ivory. His face was wrinkled and pouched and puffy

with sleep, and Todd saw with some distaste that he hadn't bothered shaving

for the last couple of days. Todd's father was fond of saying, 'A shave puts a

shine on the morning.' Todd's father shaved every day, whether he had to

work or not. The eyes looking out at Todd were watchful but deeply

sunken, laced with snaps of red. Todd felt an instant of deep

disappointment. The guy did look a little bit like Albert Einstein, and he did

look a little bit like Boris Karloff, but what he looked like more than

anything else was one of the seedy old winos that hung around down by the

railroad yard. But of course, Todd reminded himself, the man had just

gotten up. Todd had seen Denker many times before today (although he had

been very careful to make sure that Denker hadn't seen him, no way, Jose),

and on his public occasions, Denker looked very natty, every inch an officer

in retirement, you might say, even though he was seventy-six if the articles

Todd had read at the library had his birth-date right. On the days when Todd

had shadowed him to the Shoprite where Denker did his shopping or to one

of the three movie theatres on the bus line-Denker had no car-he was

always dressed in one of four neatly kept suits, no matter how warm the

weather. If the weather looked threatening he carried a furled umbrella

under one arm like a swagger stick. He sometimes wore a trilby hat. And on

the occasions when Denker went out, he was always neatly shaved and his

white moustache (worn to conceal an imperfectly corrected harelip) was

carefully trimmed.

'A boy,' he said now. His voice was thick and sleepy. Todd saw with new

disappointment that his robe was faded and tacky. One rounded collar point

stood up at a drunken angle to poke at his wattled neck. There was a splotch

of something that might have been chili or possibly A-l Steak Sauce on the

left lapel, and he smelled of cigarettes and stale booze. 'A boy,' he repeated.

'I don't need anything, boy. Read the sign. You can read, can't you? Of

course you can. All American boys can read. Don't be a nuisance, boy.

Good day.' The door began to close.

He might have dropped it right there, Todd thought much later on one of

the nights when sleep was hard to find. His disappointment at seeing the

man for the first time at close range, seeing him with his street-face put

away-hanging in the closet, you might say, along with his umbrella and his

trilby-might have done it. It could have ended in that moment, the tiny,

unimportant snicking sound of the latch cutting off everything that

happened later as neatly as a pair of shears. But, as the man himself had

observed, he was an American boy, and he had been taught that persistence

is a virtue. 'Don't forget your paper, Mr Dussander,' Todd said, holding the

Times out politely. The door stopped dead in its swing still inches from the

jamb. A tight and watchful expression flitted across Kurt Dussander's face

and was gone at

once. There might have been fear in that expression. It was good, the way

he had made that expression disappear, but Todd was disappointed for the

third time. He hadn't expected Dussander to be good; he had expected

Dussander to be great. Boy, Todd thought with real disgust Boy oh boy.

He pulled the door open again. One hand, bunched with arthritis,

unlatched the screen door. The hand pushed the screen door open just

enough to wriggle through like a spider and close over the edge of the paper

Todd was holding out. The boy saw with distaste that the old man's

fingernails were long and yellow and horny. It was a hand that had spent

most of its waking hours holding one cigarette after another. Todd thought

smoking was a filthy dangerous habit, one he himself would never take up.

It really was a wonder that Dussander had lived as long as he had. The old

man tugged. 'Give me my paper.'

'Sure thing, Mr Dussander.' Todd released his hold on the paper. The

spider-hand yanked it inside. The screen closed.

'My name is Denker,' the old man said. 'Not this Doo-Zander. Apparently

you cannot read. What a pity. Good day.'

The door started to close again. Todd spoke rapidly into ' the narrowing

gap. 'Bergen-Belsen, January 1943 to June 1943, Auschwitz, June 1943 to

June of 1944, Unterkommandant. Patin -'

The door stopped again. The old man's pouched and pallid face hung in

the gap like a wrinkled, half-deflated balloon. Todd smiled.

'You left Patin just ahead of the Russians. You got to Buenos Aires. Some

people say you got rich there, investing the gold you took out of Germany

in the drug trade. Whatever, you were in Mexico City from 1950 to 1952.

Then -'

'Boy, you are crazy like a cuckoo bird.' One of the arthritic fingers twirled

circles around a misshapen ear. But the toothless mouth was quivering in an

infirm, panicky way 'From 1952 until 1958, I don't know,' Todd said,

smiling more widely still. 'No one does, I guess, or at least they're not

telling. But an Israeli agent spotted you in Cuba, working as the concierge

in a big hotel just before Castro took over. They lost you when the rebels

came into Havana. You popped up in West Berlin in 1965. They almost got

you.' He pronounced the last two words as one: gotcha. At the same time he

squeezed all of his fingers together into one large, wriggling fist.

Dussander's eyes dropped to those well-made and well-nourished American

hands, hands that were made for building soapbox racers and Aurora

models. Todd had done both. In fact, the year before, he and his dad had

built a model of the Titanic. It had taken almost four months, and Todd's

father kept it in his office.

'I don't know what you are talking about,' Dussander said.

Without his false teeth, his words had a mushy sound Todd didn't like. It

didn't sound well, authentic. Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes sounded

more like a Nazi than Dussander did. But in his time he must have been a

real whiz. In an article on the death-camps in Men's Action, the writer had

called him The Blood-Fiend of Patin. 'Get out of here, boy. Before I call the

police.'

'Gee, I guess you better call them, Mr Dussander. Or Heir Dussander, if

you like that better.' He continued to smile, showing perfect teeth that had

been fluoridated since the beginning of his life and bathed thrice a day in

Crest toothpaste for almost as long. 'After 1965, no one saw you again

until I did, two months ago, on the downtown bus.'

'You're insane.'

'So if you want to call the police,' Todd said, smiling, 'you go right ahead.

I'll wait on the stoop. But if you don't want to call them right away, why

don't I come in?

We'll talk.' There was a long moment while the old man looked at the

smiling boy. Birds twitted in the trees. On the next block a power mower

was running, and far off, on busier streets, horns honked out their own

rhythm of life and commerce.

In spite of everything, Todd felt the onset of doubt He couldn't be wrong,

could he? Was there some mistake on his part? He didn't think so, but this

was no schoolroom exercise. It was real life. So he felt a surge of relief

(mild relief, he assured himself later) when Dussander said: 'You may come

in for a moment, if you like. But only because I do not wish to make trouble

for you, you understand?'

'Sure, Mr Dussander,' Todd said. He opened the screen and came into the

hall. Dussander closed the door behind them, shutting off the morning.

The house smelted stale and slightly malty. It smelted the way Todd's

own house smelted sometimes the morning after his folks had thrown a

party and before his mother had had a chance to air it out. But this smell

was worse. It was lived-in and ground-in. It was liquor, fried food, sweat,

old clothes, and some stinky medicinal smell like Vicks or Mentholatum. It

was dark in the hallway, and Dussander was standing too close, his head

hunched into the collar of his robe like the head of a vulture waiting for

some hurt animal to give up the ghost. In that instant, despite the stubble

and the loosely hanging flesh, Todd could see the man who had stood inside

the black SS uniform more clearly than he had ever seen him on the street.

And he felt a sudden lancet of fear slide into his belly. Mild fear, he

amended later.

'I should tell you "that if anything happens to me -' he began, and then

Dussander shuffled past him and into the living room, his slippers wish-

wishing on the floor. He flapped a contemptuous hand at Todd, and Todd

felt a flush of hot blood mount into his throat and cheeks.

Todd followed him, his smile wavering for the first time. He had not

pictured it happening quite like this. But it would work out. Things would

come into focus. Of course they would. Things always did. He began to

smile again as he stepped into the living room.

It was another disappointment-and how!-but one he supposed he should

have been prepared for. There was of course no oil portrait of Hitler with

his forelock dangling and eyes that followed you. No medals in cases, no

ceremonial sword mounted on the wall, no Luger or PPK Walther on the

mantle (there was, in fact, no mantle). Of course, Todd told himself, the guy

would have to be crazy to put any of those things out where people could

see them. Still, it was hard to put everything you saw in the movies or on

TV out of your head. It looked like the living room of any old man living

alone on a slightly frayed pension. The fake fireplace was faced with fake

bricks. A Westclox hung over it. There was a black and white Motorola TV

on a stand; the tips of the rabbit ears had been wrapped in aluminium foil to

improve reception. The floor was covered with a grey rug; its nap was

balding. The magazine rack by the sofa held copies of National Geographic,

Reader's Digest, and the LA Times. Instead of Hitler or a ceremonial sword

hung on the wall, there was a framed certificate of citizenship and a picture

of a woman in a funny hat. Dussander later told him that sort of hat was

called a cloche, and they had been popular in the twenties and thirties.

'My wife,' Dussander said sentimentally. 'She died in 1955 of a lung

disease. At that time I was a draughtsman at the Menschler Motor Works in

Essen. I was heartbroken.'

Todd continued to smile. He crossed the room as if to get a better look at

the woman in the picture. Instead of looking at the picture, he fingered the

shade on a small table-lamp.

'Stop that!' Dussander barked harshly. Todd jumped back a little.

That was good,' he said sincerely. 'Really commanding. It was Use Koch

who had the lampshades made out of human skin, wasn't it? And she was

the one who had the trick with the little glass tubes.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Dussander said. There was a

package of Kools, the kind with no filter, on top of the TV. He offered them

to Todd. 'Cigarette?' he asked, and grinned. His grin was hideous.

'No. They give you lung cancer. My dad used to smoke, but he gave it up.

He went to SmokeEnders.'

'Did he?' Dussander produced a wooden match from the pocket of his

robe and scratched it indifferently on the plastic case of the Motorola.

Puffing, he said: 'Can you give me one reason why I shouldn't call the

police and tell them of the monstrous accusations you've just made? One

reason? Speak quickly, boy. The telephone is just down the hall. Your father

would spank you, I think. You would sit for dinner on a cushion for a week

or so, eh?'

'My parents don't believe in spanking. Corporal punishment causes more

problems than it cures.' Todd's eyes suddenly gleamed. 'Did you spank any

of them? The women? Did you take off their clothes and -'

With a muffled exclamation, Dussander started for the phone.

Todd said coldly: 'You better not do that.'

Dussander turned. In measured tones that were spoiled only slightly by

the fact that his false teeth were not in, he said: 'I tell you this once, boy,

and once only. My name is Arthur Denker. It has never been anything else;

it has not even been Americanized. I was in fact named Arthur by my

father, who greatly admired the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, It has never

been Doo-Zander, nor Himmler, nor Father Christmas. I was a reserve

lieutenant in the war. I never joined the Nazi party. In the battle of Berlin I

fought for three years. I will admit that in the late thirties, when I was first

married, I supported Hitler. He ended the depression and returned some of

the pride we had lost in the aftermath of the sickening and unfair Treaty of

Versailles. I suppose I supported him mostly because I got a job and there

was tobacco again, and I didn't need to hunt through the gutters when I

needed to smoke. I thought, in the late thirties, that he was a great man.

In his own way, perhaps he was. But at the end he was mad, directing

phantom armies at the whim of an astrologer. He even gave Blondi, his dog,

a death-capsule. The act of a madman; by the end they were all madmen,

singing the Horst Wessel Song as they fed poison to their children. On 2

May 1945, my regiment gave up to the Americans. I remember that a

private soldier named Hackermeyer gave me a chocolate bar. I wept.

There was no reason to fight on; the war was over, and really had been

since February. I was interned at Essen and was treated very well. We

listened to the Nuremberg trials on the radio and when Goering committed

suicide, I traded fourteen American cigarettes for half a bottle of schnapps

and got drunk. I was released in January of 1946. At the Essen Motor

Works I put wheels on cars until 1963, when I retired and emigrated to the

United States. To come here was a lifelong ambition. In 1967 I became a

citizen. I am an American. I vote. No Buenos Aires. No drug dealing. No

Berlin. No Cuba.' He pronounced it Koo-ba. 'And now, unless you leave, I

make my telephone call.'

He watched Todd do nothing. Then he went down the hall and picked up

the telephone.

Still Todd stood in the living room, beside the table with the small lamp

on it.

Dussander began to dial. Todd watched him, his heart speeding up until it

was drumming in his chest. After the fourth number, Dussander turned and

looked at him. His shoulders sagged. He put the phone down.

'A boy,' he breathed. 'A boy.' Todd smiled widely but rather modestly.

'How did you find out?'

'One piece of luck and a lot of hard work,' Todd said' There's this friend

of mine, Harold Pegler his name is, only all the kids call him Foxy. He

plays second base for our team.

And his dad's got all these magazines out in his garage. Great big stacks

of them. War magazines. They're old. I looked for some new ones, but the

guy who runs the newsstand across from the school says most of them went

out of business. In most of them there's pictures of Krauts-German soldiers,

I mean-and Japs torturing these women. And articles about the

concentration camps. I really groove on all that concentration camp stuff.'

'You groove on it.' Dussander was staring at him, one hand rubbing up

and down on his cheek, producing a very small sandpapery sound.

'Groove. You know. I get off on it. I'm interested.'

He remembered that day in Foxy's garage as clearly as anything in his

life-more clearly, he suspected. He remembered in the fourth grade, before

Careers Day, how Mrs Anderson (all the kids called her Bugs because of

her big front teeth) had talked to them about what she called finding YOUR

GREAT INTEREST.

'It comes all at once,' Bugs Anderson had rhapsodized. 'You see

something for the first time, and right away you know you have found

YOUR GREAT INTEREST. It's like a key turning in a lock. Or falling in

love for the first time. That's why Careers Day is so important, children-it

may be the day on which you find YOUR GREAT INTEREST.'

And she had gone on to tell them about her own GREAT INTEREST,

which turned out not to be teaching the fourth grade but collecting

nineteenth-century postcards.

Todd had thought Mrs Anderson was full of bullspit at the time, but that

day in Foxy's garage, he remembered what she had said and wondered if

maybe she hadn't been right after all.

The Santa Anas had been blowing that day, and to the east there were

brush-fires. He remembered the smell of burning, hot and greasy. He

remembered Foxy's crewcut, and the flakes of Butch Wax clinging to the

front of it. He remembered everything.

'I know there's comics here someplace,' Foxy had said. His mother had a

hangover and had kicked them out of the house for making too much noise.

'Neat ones. They're Westerns, mostly, but there's some Turok, Son of Stones

and_'

'What are those?' Todd asked, pointing at the bulging cardboard cartons

under the stairs.

'Ah, they're no good,' Foxy said. 'True war stories, mostly. Boring.'

'Can I look at some?'

'Sure. I'll find the comics.'

But by the time fat Foxy Pegler found them, Todd no longer wanted to

read comics. He was lost. Utterly lost.

It's like a key turning in a lock. Or falling in love for the first time.

It had been like that. He had known about the war, of course-not the

stupid one going on now, where the Americans had gotten the shit kicked

out of them by a bunch of gooks in black pyjamas-but World War II. He

knew that the Americans

wore round helmets with net on them and the Krauts wore sort of square

ones. He knew that the Americans won most of the battles and that the

Germans had invented rockets near the end and shot them from Germany

onto London. He had even known something about the concentration

camps.

The difference between all of that and what he found in the magazines

under the stairs in Foxy's garage was like the difference between being told

about germs and then actually seeing them in a microscope, squirming

around and alive.

Here was Use Koch. Here were crematoriums with their doors standing

open on their soot-clotted hinges. Here were officers in SS uniforms and

prisoners in striped uniforms.

The smell of the old pulp magazines was like the smell of the brush-fires

burning out of control on the east of Santo Donate, and he could feel the old

paper crumbling against the pads of his fingers, and he turned the pages, no

longer in Foxy's garage but caught somewhere crosswise in time, trying to

cope with the idea that they had really done those things, that somebody

had really done those things, and that somebody had let them do those

things, and his head began to ache with a mixture of revulsion and

excitement, and his eyes were hot and strained, but he read on, and from a

column of print beneath a picture of tangled bodies at a place called

Dachau, this figure jumped out at him: 6,000,000. And he thought:

Somebody goofed there, somebody added a zero or two, that's three times

as many people as there are in LA! But then, in another magazine (the cover

of this one showed a woman chained to a wall while a guy in a Nazi

uniform approached her with a poker in his hand and a grin on his face), he

saw it again: 6,000,000 His headache got worse. His mouth went dry.

Dimly, from some distance, he heard Foxy saying he had to go in for

supper. Todd asked Foxy if he could stay out here in the garage and read

while Foxy ate. Foxy gave him a look of mild puzzlement, shrugged, and

said sure. And Todd read, hunched over the boxes of the old true war

magazines, until his mother called and asked if he was ever going to go

home.

Like a key turning in a lock.

All the magazines said it was bad, what had happened. But all the stories

were continued at the back of the book, and when you turned to those

pages, the words saying it was bad were surrounded by ads, and these ads

sold German knives and belts and helmets as well as Magic Trusses and

Guaranteed Hair Restorer. These ads sold German flags emblazoned with

swastikas and Nazi Lugers and a game called Panzer Attack as well as

correspondence lessons and offers to make you rich selling elevator shoes

to short men.

They said it was bad, but it seemed like a lot of people must not mind.

Like falling in love.

Oh yes, he remembered that day very well. He remembered everything

about it- a yellowing pin-up calendar for a defunct year on the back wall,

the oil-stain on the cement floor, the way the magazines had been tied

together with orange twine. He remembered how his headache had gotten a

little worse each time he thought of that incredible number, 6,000,000 He

remembered thinking: I want to know about everything that happened in

those places.

Everything. And I want to know which is more true-the words, or the ads

they put beside the words.

He remembered Bugs Anderson as he at last pushed the boxes back

under the stairs and thought: She was right. I've found my GREAT

INTEREST.

Dussander looked at Todd for a long time. Then he crossed the living

room and sat down heavily in a rocking chair. He looked at Todd again,

unable to analyze the slightly dreamy, slightly nostalgic expression on the

boy's face.

'Yeah. It was the magazines that got me interested, but I figured a lot of

what they said was just, you know, bullspit. So I went to the library and

found out a lot more stuff. Some of it was even neater. At first the crummy

librarian didn't want me to look at any of it because it was in the adult

section of the library, but I told her it was for school. If it's for school they

have to let you have it. She called my dad, though.' Todd's eyes turned up

scornfully. 'Like she thought dad didn't know what I was doing, if you can

dig that.'

'He did know?'

'Sure. My dad thinks kids should find out about life as soon as they can-

the bad as well as the good. Then they'll be ready for it. He says life is a

tiger you have to grab by the tail, and if you don't know the nature of the

beast it will eat you up.'

'Mmmmm,' Dussander said.

'My mom thinks the same way.'

'Mmmmm.' Dussander looked dazed, not quite sure where he was.

'Anyhow,' Todd said, 'the library stuff was real good.

They must have had a hundred books with stuff in them about the Nazi

concentration camps, just here in the Santa Donate library. A lot of people

must like to read about that stuff. There weren't as many pictures as in

Foxy's dad's magazines, but the other stuff was real gooshy. Chairs with

spikes sticking up through the seats. Pulling out gold teeth with pliers.

Poison gas that came out of the showers.' Todd shook his head. 'You guys

just went overboard, you know that? You really did.'

'Gooshy,' Dussander said heavily.

'I really did do a research paper, and you know what I got on it? An A

Plus. Of course I had to be careful. You have to write that stuff in a certain

way. You got to be careful.'

'Do you?' Dussander asked. He took another cigarette with a hand that

trembled.

'Oh yeah. All those library books, they read a certain way. Like the guys

who wrote them got puking sick over what they were writing about' Todd

was frowning, wrestling with the thought, trying to bring it out The fact that

tone, as that word is applied to writing, wasn't yet in his vocabulary, made it

more difficult 'They all write like they lost a lot of sleep over it How we've

got to be careful so nothing like that ever happens again. I made my paper

like that, and I guess the teacher gave me an A just 'cause I read the source

material without losing my lunch.' Once more, Todd smiled winningly.

Dussander dragged heavily on his unfiltered Kool. The tip trembled

slightly. As he feathered smoke out of his nostrils, he coughed an old man's

dank, hollow cough. 'I can hardly believe this conversation is taking place,'

he said. He leaned forward and peered closely at Todd. 'Boy, do you know

the word "existentialism"?'

Todd ignored the question. 'Did you ever meet Use Koch?'

'Use Koch?' Almost inaudibly, Dussander said: 'Yes. I met her.'

'Was she beautiful?' Todd asked eagerly. 'I mean' His hands described

an hourglass in the air.

'Surely you have seen her photograph?' Dussander asked. 'An aficionado

such as yourself?'

'What's an af aff'

'An aficionado,' Dussander said, 'is one who grooves. One who gets off

on something.'

'Yeah? Cool.' Todd's grin, puzzled and weak for a moment, shone out

triumphantly again.

'Sure, I've seen her picture. But you know how they are in those books.'

He spoke as if Dussander had them all. 'Black and white, fuzzy just

snapshots. None of those guys knew they were taking pictures for, you

know, history. Was she really stacked?'

'She was fat and dumpy and she had bad skin,' Dussander said shortly. He

crushed his cigarette out half-smoked in a Table Talk pie dish filled with

dead butts.

'Oh. Golly.' Todd's face fell.

'Just luck,' Dussander mused, looking at Todd. 'You saw my picture in a

war-adventures magazine and happened to ride next to me on the bus.

Tcha!' He brought a fist down on the arm of his easy chair, but without

much force.

'No sir, Mr Dussander. There was more to it than that. A lot.' Todd added

earnestly, leaning forward.

'Oh? Really?' The bushy eyebrows rose, signalling polite disbelief.

'Sure. I mean, the pictures of you in my scrapbook were all thirty years

old, at least. I mean, it is 1974.'

'You keep a a scrapbook?'

'Oh, yes, sir! It's a good one. Hundreds of pictures. I'll show it to you

sometime. You'll go ape.'

Dussander's face pulled into a revolted grimace, but he said nothing.

The first couple of times I saw you, I wasn't sure at all. And then you got

on the bus one day when it was raining, and you had this shiny black slicker

on -'

'That,' Dussander breathed.

'Sure. There was a picture of you in a coat like that in one of the

magazines out in Foxy's garage. Also, a photo of you in your SS greatcoat

in one of the library books. And when I saw you that day, I just said to

myself, "It's for sure. That's Kurt Dussander." So I started to shadow you -'

'You did what?'

'Shadow you. Follow you. My ambition is to be a private detective like

Sam Spade in the books, or Mannix on TV. Anyway, I was super careful. I

didn't want you to get wise.

Want to look at some pictures?'

Todd took a folded-over manilla envelope from his back pocket. Sweat

had stuck the flap down. He peeled it back carefully. His eyes were

sparkling like a boy thinking about his birthday, or Christmas, or the

firecrackers he will shoot off on the Fourth of July.

'You took pictures of me?"

'Oh, you bet I got this little camera. A Kodak. It's thin and flat and fits

right into your hand. Once you get the hang of it, you can take pictures of

the subject just by holding the camera in your hand and spreading your

fingers enough to let the lens peek through. Then you hit the button with

your thumb.' Todd laughed modestly. 'I got the hang of it but I took a lot of

pictures of my fingers while I did. I hung right in there, though. I think a

person can do anything if they try hard enough, you know it? It's corny but

true.'

Kurt Dussander had begun to look white and ill, shrunken inside his robe.

'Did you have these pictures finished by a commercial developer, boy?'

'Huh?' Todd looked shocked and startled, then contemptuous. 'No! What

do you think I am, stupid? My dad's got a darkroom. I've been developing

my own pictures since I was nine.'

Dussander said nothing, but he relaxed a little and some colour came

back into his face.

Todd handed him several glossy prints, the rough edges confirming that

they had been home-developed. Dussander went through them, silently

grim. Here he was sitting erect in a window-seat of the downtown bus, with

a copy of the latest James Michener, Centennial, in his hands. Here he was

at the Devon Avenue bus stop, his umbrella cocked under his arm and his

head cocked back at an angle which suggested De Gaulle at his most

imperial. Here he was standing on line just under the marquee of the

Majestic Theatre, erect and silent, conspicuous among the leaning teenagers

and blank-faced housewives in curlers by his height and his bearing.

Finally, here he was peering into his own mailbox.

'I was scared you might see me on that one,' Todd said. 'It was a

calculated risk. I was right across the street Boy oh boy, I wish I could

afford a Minolta with a telephoto lens.

Someday' Todd looked wistful.

'No doubt you had a story ready, just in case.'

'I was going to ask you if you'd seen my dog. Anyway, after I developed

the pix, I compared them to these.'

He handed Dussander three Xeroxed photographs. He had seen them all

before, many times. The first showed him in his office at the Eatin

resettlement camp; it had been cropped so nothing showed but him and the

Nazi flag on its stand by his desk. The second was a picture that had been

taken on the day of his enlistment The last showed him shaking hands with

Heinrich Clucks, who had been subordinate only to Himmler himself.

'I was pretty sure then, but I couldn't see if you had the harelip because of

your goshdamn moustache. But I had to be sure, so I got this.'

He handed over the last sheet from his envelope. It had been folded over

many times. Dirt was grimed into the creases. The corners were lopped and

milled-the way papers get when they spend a long time in the pockets of

young boys who have no shortage of things to do and places to go. It was a

copy of the Israeli want-sheet on Kurt Dussander.

Holding it in his hands, Dussander reflected on corpses that were unquiet

and refused to stay buried.

'I took your fingerprints,' Todd said, smiling. 'And then I did the

compares to the one on the sheet.'

Dussander gaped at him and then uttered the German word for shit 'You

did

not!'

'Sure I did. My mom and dad gave me a fingerprint set for Christmas last

year. A real one, not just a toy. It had the powder and three brushes for three

different surfaces and special paper for lifting them. My folks know I want

to be a PI when I grow up. Of course, they think I'll grow out of it' He

dismissed this idea with a disinterested lift and drop of his shoulders. 'The

book explained all about whorls and lands and points of similarity. They're

called compares. You need eight compares for a fingerprint to get accepted

in court 'So anyway, one day when you were at the movies, I came here and

dusted your mailbox and doorknob and lifted all the prints I could. Pretty

smart, huh?' Dussander said nothing. He was clutching the arms of his

chair, and his toothless, deflated mouth was trembling. Todd didn't like that.

It made him look like he was on the verge of tears. That, of course, was

ridiculous. The Blood Fiend of Patin in tears? You might as well expect

Chevrolet to go bankrupt or McDonald's to give up burgers and start selling

caviar and truffles.

'I got two sets of prints,' Todd said. 'One of them didn't look anything like

the ones on the wanted poster. I figured those were the postman's. The rest

were yours. I found more than eight compares. I found fourteen good ones.'

He grinned. 'And that's how I did it.'

'You are a little bastard,' Dussander said, and for a moment his eyes

shone dangerously. Todd felt a tingling little thrill, as he had in the hall.

Then Dussander slumped back again. 'Who have you told?'

'No one.'

'Not even this friend? This Cony Pegler?'

'Foxy. Foxy Pegler. Nah, he's a blabbermouth. I haven't told anybody.

There's nobody I trust that much.'

'What do you want? Money? There is none, I'm afraid. In South America

there was, although it was nothing as romantic or dangerous as the drug

trade. There is-there was -a kind of "old boy network" in Brazil and

Paraguay and Santo Domingo. Fugitives from the war. I became part of

their circle and made a fortune in minerals and ores-tin, copper, bauxite.

Then the changes came. Nationalism, anti-Americanism. I might have

ridden out the changes, but then Weisenthal's men caught my scent. Bad

luck follows bad luck, boy, like dogs after a bitch in heat. Twice they almost

had me; once I heard the Jew-bastards in the next room.

'They hung Eichmann,' he whispered. One hand went to his neck, and his

eyes had become as round as the eyes of a child listening to the darkest

passage of a scary tale -Hansel and Gretel, perhaps, or Bluebeard. 'He was

an old man, of no danger to anyone. He was apolitical. Still, they hung him.'

Todd nodded.

'At last, I went to the only people who could help me. They had helped

others, and I could run no more.'

'You went to the Odessa?' Todd asked eagerly.

'To the Sicilians,' Dussander said dryly, and Todd's face fell again. 'It was

arranged. False papers, false past. Would you care for a drink, boy?'

'Sure. You got a Coke?'

'No Coke.' He pronounced it Kok. 'Milk?'

'Milk.' Dussander went through the archway and into the kitchen. A

fluorescent bar buzzed into life. 'I live now on stock dividends,' his voice

came back. 'Stocks I picked up after the war under yet another name.

Through a bank in the State of Maine, if you please. The banker who

bought them for me went to jail for murdering his wife a year after I bought

them life is sometimes strange, boy, hein?'

A refrigerator door opened and closed.

"The Sicilian jackals didn't know about those stocks,' he said. Today they

are everywhere, but in those days, Boston was as far north as they could be

found. If they had known, they would have had those as well. They would

have picked me clean and sent me to America to starve on welfare and food

stamps.'

Todd heard a cupboard door open; he heard liquid poured into a glass.

'A little General Motors, a little American Telephone and Telegraph, a

hundred and fifty shares of Revion. All this banker's choices. Dufresne, his

name was-I remember, because it sounds a little like mine. It seems he was

not so smart at wife-killing as he was at picking growth stocks. The crime

passionnel, boy. It only proves that all men are donkeys who can read.'

He came back into the room, slippers whispering. He held two green

plastic glasses that looked like the premiums they sometimes give out at gas

station openings. When you filled your tank, you got a free glass.

Dussander thrust a glass at Todd.

'I lived adequately on the stock portfolio this Dufresne had set up for me

for the first five years. But then I sold my Diamond Match stock in order to

buy this house and a small cottage not far from Big Sur. Then, inflation.

Recession. I sold the cottage and one by one I sold the stocks, many of them

at fantastic profits. I wish to God I had bought more. But I thought I was

well-protected in other directions; the stocks were, as you Americans say, a

"flier"' He made a toothless hissing sound and snapped his fingers.

Todd was bored. He had not come here to listen to Dussander whine

about his money or mutter about his stocks. The thought of blackmailing

Dussander had never crossed Todd's mind. Money? What would he do with

it? He had his allowance; he had his paper route.

If his monetary needs went higher than what these could provide during

any given week, there was always someone who needed his lawn mowed.

Todd lifted his milk to his lips and then hesitated. His smile shone out

again an admiring smile. He extended the gas-station premium glass to

Dussander.

' You have some of it,' he said slyly.

Dussander stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, and then rolled

his bloodshot eyes. 'Gruss Gott!' He took the glass, swallowed twice, and

handed it back. 'No gasping for breath. No clawing at the throat. No smell

of bitter almonds. It is milk, boy. Milk.

From the Dairylea Farms. On the carton is a picture of a smiling cow.'

Todd watched him warily for a moment, then took a small sip. Yes, it

tasted like milk, sure did, but somehow he didn't feel very thirsty anymore.

He put the glass down.

Dussander shrugged, raised his own glass-it contained a large knock of

whiskey-and took a swallow. He smacked his lips over it.

'Schnapps?' Todd asked.

'Bourbon. Ancient Age. Very nice. And cheap.'

Todd fiddled his fingers along the seams of his jeans.

'So,' Dussander said, 'if you have decided to have a "flier" of your own,

you should be aware that you have picked a worthless stock.'

'Huh?'

'Blackmail,' Dussander said. 'Isn't that what they call it on Mannix and

Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones? Extortion. If that was what-'

But Todd was laughing-hearty, boyish laughter. He shook his head, tried

to speak, could not, and went on laughing.

'No,' Dussander said, and suddenly he looked grey and more frightened

than he had since he and Todd had begun to speak. He took another large

swallow of his drink, grimaced, and shuddered 'I see that is not it at least,

not the extortion of money. But, though you laugh, I smell extortion in it

somewhere. What is it? Why do you come here and disturb an old man!

Perhaps, as you say, I was once a Nazi. Gestapo, even. Now I am only old,

and to have a bowel movement I have to use a suppository. So what do you

want?' Todd had sobered again. He stared at Dussander with an open and

appealing frankness. 'Why I want to hear about it. That's all. That's all I

want. Really.'

'Hear about it?' Dussander echoed. He looked utterly perplexed. Todd

leaned forward, tanned elbows on bluejeaned knees. 'Sure. The firing

squads. The gas

chambers. The ovens. The guys who had to dig their own graves and then

stand on the ends so they'd fall into them. The ' His tongue came out and

wetted his lips. 'The examinations. The experiments. Everything. All the

gooshy stuff.' Dussander stared at him with a certain amazed detachment,

the way a veterinarian might stare at a cat who was giving birth to a

succession of two-headed kittens. 'You are a monster,' he said softly.

Todd sniffed. 'According to the books I read for my report, you're the

monster, Mr Dussander. Not me. You sent them to the ovens, not me. Two

thousand a day at Patin before you came, three thousand after, thirty-five-

hundred before the Russians came and made you stop. Himmler called you

an efficiency expert and gave you a medal. So you call me a monster. Oh

boy.'

'All of that is a filthy American lie,' Dussander said, stung. He set his

glass down with a bang, slopping bourbon onto his hands and the table. The

problem was not of my making, nor was the solution. I was given orders

and directives, which I followed.' Todd's smile widened; it was now almost

a smirk.

'Oh, I know how the Americans have distorted that,' Dussander muttered.

'But your own politicians make our Dr. Goebbels look like a child playing

with picture books in a kindergarten. They speak of morality while they

douse screaming children and old women in burning napalm. Your draft-

resisters are called cowards and "peaceniks". For refusing to follow orders

they are either put in jails or scourged from the country. Those who

demonstrate against this country's unfortunate Asian adventure are clubbed

down in the streets. The GI soldiers who kill the innocent are decorated by

Presidents, welcomed home from the bayoneting of children and the

burning of hospitals with parades and bunting. They are given dinners,

Keys to the City, free tickets to pro football games.' He toasted his glass in

Todd's direction. 'Only those who lose are tried as war criminals for

following orders and directives.' He drank and then had a coughing fit that

brought thin colour to his cheeks.

Through most of this Todd fidgeted the way he did when his parents

discussed whatever had been on the news that night-good old Walter

Klondike, his dad called him. He didn't care about Dussander's politics any

more than he cared about Dussander's stocks. His idea was that people

made up politics so they could do things. Like when he wanted to feel

around under Sharon Ackerman's dress last year. Sharon said it was bad for

him to want to do that, even though he could tell from her tone of voice that

the idea sort of excited her. So he told her he wanted to be a doctor when he

grew up and then she let him. That was politics. He wanted to hear about

German doctors trying to mate women with dogs, putting identical twins

into refrigerators to see whether they would die at the same time or if one of

them would last longer, and electroshock therapy, and operations without

anaesthetic, and German soldiers raping all the women they wanted. The

rest was just so much tired bullshit to cover up the gooshy stuff after

someone came along and put a stop to it 'If I hadn't followed orders, I would

have been dead.' Dussander was breathing hard, his upper body rocking

back and forth in the chair, making the springs squeak. A little cloud of

liquor-smell hung around him. "There was always the Russian front, nicht

wahr! Our leaders were madmen, granted, but does one argue with

madmen especially when the maddest of them all has the luck of Satan?

He escaped a brilliant assassination attempt by inches. Those who conspired

were strangled with piano-wire, strangled slowly. Their death-agonies were

filmed for the edification of the elite-'

'Yeah! Neat!' Todd cried impulsively. 'Did you see that movie?'

'Yes. I saw. We all saw what happened to those unwilling or unable to run

before the wind and wait for the storm to end. What we did then was the

right thing.

For that time and that place, it was the right thing. I would do it again.

But' His eyes dropped to his glass. It was empty.

' but I don't wish to speak of it, or even think of it. What we did was

motivated only by survival, and nothing about survival is pretty. I had

dreams' He slowly took a cigarette from the box on the TV. 'Yes. For years

I had them. Blackness, and sounds in the blackness. Tractor engines.

Bulldozer engines. Gunbutts thudding against what might have been frozen

earth, or human skulls. Whistles, sirens, pistol-shots, screams. The doors of

cattle-cars rumbling open on cold winter afternoons.

Then, in my dreams, all sounds would stop-and eyes would open in the

dark, gleaming like the eyes of animals in a rainforest For many years I

lived on the edge of the jungle, and I suppose that is why it is always the

jungle I smelled and felt in those dreams. When I woke from them I would

be drenched with sweat, my heart thundering in my chest, my hand stuffed

into my mouth to stifle the screams. And I would think: the dream is the

truth. Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba those places are the dream. In the reality I

am still at Patin. The Russians are closer today than yesterday. Some of

them are remembering that in 1943 they had to eat frozen German corpses

to stay alive. Now they long to drink hot German blood. There were

rumours, boy, that some of them did just that when they crossed into

Germany: cut the throats of some prisoners and drank their blood out of a

boot. I would wake up and think: The work must go on, if only so there is

no evidence of what we did here, or so little that the world, which doesn't

want to believe it, won't have to. I would think: The work must go on if we

are to survive.'

Unlike what had gone before, Todd listened to this with close attention

and great interest This was pretty good, but he was sure there would be

better stuff in the days ahead. All Dussander needed was a little prodding.

Heck, he was lucky. Lots of men his age were senile.

Dussander dragged deeply on his cigarette. 'Later, after the dreams went

away, there were days when I would think I had seen someone from Patin.

Never guards or fellow officers, always inmates. I remember one afternoon

in West Germany, ten years ago. There was an accident on the autobahn.

Traffic was frozen in every lane. I sat in my Morris, listening to the radio,

waiting for the traffic to move. I looked to my right. There was a very old

Simca in the next lane, and the man behind the wheel was looking at me.

He was perhaps fifty, and he looked ill. There was a scar on his cheek. His

hair was white, short, cut badly. I looked away. The minutes passed and still

the traffic didn't move. I began snatching glances at the man in the Simca.

Every time I did, he was looking at me, his face as still as death, his eyes

sunken in their sockets. I became convinced he had been at Patin. He had

been there and he had recognized me.'

Dussander wiped a hand across his eyes.

'It was winter. The man was wearing an overcoat. But I was convinced

that if I got out of my car and went to him, made him take off his coat and

push up his shirtsleeves, I would see the number on his arm.

'At last the traffic began to move again. I pulled away from the Simca. If

the jam had lasted another ten minutes, I believe I would have gotten out of

my car and pulled the old man out of his. I would have beaten him, number

or no number. I would have beaten him for looking at me that way.

Shortly after that, I left Germany forever.'

'Lucky for you,' Todd said.

Dussander shrugged. 'It was the same everywhere. Havana, Mexico City,

Rome. I was in Rome for three years, you know. I would see a man looking

at me over his capuccino in a cafe a woman in a hotel lobby who seemed

more interested

in me than in her magazine a waiter in a restaurant who would keep

glancing at me no matter who he was serving.

I would become convinced that these people were studying me, and that

night the dream would come-the sounds, the jungle, the eyes.

'But when I came to America, I put it out of my mind. I go to movies. I

eat out once a week, always at one of those fast-food places that are so

clean and so well-lighted by fluorescent bars. Here at my house I do jigsaw

puzzles and I read novels-most of them bad ones-and watch TV. At night I

drink until I'm sleepy. The dreams don't come anymore. When I see

someone looking at me in the supermarket or the library or the

tobacconist's, I think it must be because I look like their grandfather or an

old teacher or a neighbour in a town they left some years ago.' He shook

his head at Todd.

'Whatever happened at Patin, it happened to another man. Not to me.'

'Great!' Todd said. 'I want to hear all about it.'

Dussander's eyes squeezed closed, and then opened slowly. 'You don't

understand. I do not wish to speak of it.'

'You will, though. If you don't, I'll tell everyone who you are.'

Dussander stared at him, grey-faced. 'I knew,' he said, 'that I would find

the extortion sooner or later.'

'Today I want to hear about the gas ovens,' Todd said. 'How you baked

the Jews.' His smile beamed out, rich and radiant. 'But put your teeth in

before you start You look better with your teeth in.'

Dussander did as he was told. He talked to Todd about the gas ovens until

Todd had to go home for lunch. Every time he tried to slip over into

generalities, Todd would frown severely and ask him specific questions to

get him back on the track. Dussander drank a great deal as he talked. He

didn't smite.

Todd smiled. Todd smiled enough for both of them.

August, 1974.

They sat on Dussander's back porch under a cloudless, smiling sky. Todd

was wearing jeans, Keds, and his Little League shirt Dussander was

wearing a baggy grey shirt and shapeless khaki pants held up with

suspenders-wino-pants, Todd thought with private contempt; they looked

like they had come straight from a box in the back of the Salvation Army

store downtown. He was really going to have to do something about the

way Dussander dressed when he was at home. It spoiled some of the fun.

The two of them were eating Big Macs that Todd had brought in his bike

basket, pedalling fast so they wouldn't get cold. Todd was sipping a Coke

through a plastic straw.

Dussander had a glass of bourbon.

His old man's voice rose and fell, papery, hesitant, sometimes nearly

inaudible. His faded blue eyes, threaded with the usual snaps of red, were

never still. An observer might have thought them grandfather and grandson,

the latter perhaps attending some rite of passage, a handing down.

'And that's all I remember,' Dussander finished presently, and took a large

bite of his sandwich. McDonald's Secret Sauce dribbled down his chin.

'You can do better than that,' Todd said softly.

Dussander took a large swallow from his glass. "The uniforms were

made of paper,' he said finally, almost snarling. 'When one inmate died, the

uniform was passed on if it could still be worn. Sometimes one paper

uniform could dress as many as forty inmates.

I received high marks for my frugality.'

'From Glucks?'

'From Himmler.'

'But there was a clothing factory in Patin. You told me that just last week.

Why didn't you have the uniforms made there? The inmates themselves

could have made them.'

"The job of the factory in Patin was to make uniforms for German

soldiers. And as for us' Dussander's voice faltered for a moment, and then

he forced himself to go on. 'We were not in the business of rehabilitation,'

he finished.

Todd smiled his broad smile.

'Enough for today? Please? My throat is sore.'

'You shouldn't smoke so much, then,' Todd said, continuing to smile. 'Tell

me some more about the uniforms.'

'Which? Inmate or SS?' Dussander's voice was resigned.

Smiling, Todd said: 'Both.'

September, 1974.

Todd was in the kitchen of his house, making himself a peanut butter and

jelly sandwich.

You got to the kitchen by going up half a dozen redwood steps to a raised

area that gleamed with chrome and Formica. His mother's electric

typewriter had been going steadily ever since Todd had gotten home from

school. She was typing a master's thesis for a grad student. The grad student

had short hair, wore thick glasses, and looked like a creature from outer

space, in Todd's humble opinion. The thesis was on the effect of fruitflies in

the Salinas Valley after World War II, or some good shit like that. Now her

typewriter stopped and she came out of her office.

'Todd-baby,' she greeted him.

'Monica-baby,' he hailed back, amiably enough.

His mother wasn't a bad-looking chick for thirty-six, Todd thought;

blonde hair that was streaked ash in a couple of places, tall, shapely, now

dressed in dark red shorts and a sheer blouse of a warm whiskey colour-the

blouse was casually knotted below her breasts, putting her flat, unlined

midriff on show. A typewriter eraser was tucked into her hair, which had

been pinned carelessly back with a turquoise clip. 'So how's school?' she

asked him, coming up the steps into the kitchen. She brushed his lips

casually with hers and then slid onto one of the stools in front of the

breakfast counter. 'School's cool.'

'Going to be on the honour roll again?'

'Sure.' Actually, he thought his grades might slip a notch this first quarter.

He had been spending a lot of time with Dussander, and when he wasn't

actually with the old Kraut, he was thinking about the things Dussander had

told him. Once or twice he had dreamed about the things Dussander had

told him. But it was nothing he couldn't handle. 'Apt pupil,' she said,

ruffling his shaggy blond hair. 'How's that sandwich?'

'Good,' he said.

'Would you make me one and bring it into my office?"

'Can't,' he said, getting up. 'I promised Mr. Denker I'd come over and read

to him for an hour or so.'

'Are you still on Robinson Crusoe?'

'Nope.' He showed her the spine of a thick book he had bought in a junk

shop for twenty cents. 'Tom Jones.'

'Ye gods and little fishes! It'll take you the whole school-year to get

through that, Todd-baby. Couldn't you at least find an abridged edition, like

with Crusoe?'

'Probably, but he wanted to hear all of this one. He said so.'

'Oh.' She looked at him for a moment, then hugged him. It was rare for

her to be so demonstrative, and it made Todd a little uneasy. 'You're a peach

to be taking so much of your spare time to read to him. Your father and I

think it's just just exceptional.' Todd cast his eyes down modestly.

'And to not want to tell anybody,' she said. 'Hiding your light under a

bushel.'

'Oh, the kids I hang around with-they'd probably think I was some kind

of weirdo,' Todd said, smiling modestly down at the floor. 'All that good

shit.'

'Don't say that,' she admonished absently. Then: 'Do you think Mr Denker

would like to come over and have dinner with us some night?'

'Maybe,' Todd said vaguely. 'Listen, I gotta put an egg in my shoe and

beat it.'

'Okay. Supper at six-thirty. Don't forget.'

'I won't.'

'Your father's got to work late so it'll just be me and thee again, okay?'

'Crazy, baby.'

She watched him go with a fond smile, hoping there was nothing in Tom

Jones he shouldn't be reading; he was only thirteen. She didn't suppose

there was. He was growing up in a society where magazines like Penthouse

were available to anyone with a dollar and a quarter, or to any kid who

could reach up to the top shelf of the magazine rack and grab a quick peek

before the clerk could shout for him to put that up and get lost. In a society

that seemed to believe most of all in the creed of hump thy neighbour, she

didn't think there could be much in a book two hundred years old to screw

up Todd's head -although she supposed the old man might get off on it a

little. And as Richard liked to say, for a kid the whole world's a laboratory.

You have to let them poke around in it. And if the kid in question has a

healthy home life and loving parents, he'll be all the stronger for having

knocked around a few strange corners.

And there went the healthiest kid she knew, pedalling up the street on his

Schwinn. We did okay by the lad, she thought, turning to make her

sandwich. Damned if we didn't do okay.

October, 1974.

Dussander had lost weight. They sat in the kitchen, the shopworn copy of

Tom Jones between them on the oilcloth-covered table (Todd, who tried

never to miss a trick, had purchased the Cliffs Notes on the book with part

of his allowance and had carefully read the entire summary against the

possibility that his mother or father might ask him questions about the plot).

Todd was eating a Ring-Ding he had bought at the market. He had bought

one for Dussander, but Dussander hadn't touched it He only looked at it

morosely from time to time as he drank his bourbon. Todd hated to see

anything as tasty as Ring-Dings go to waste. If he didn't eat it pretty quick,

Todd was going to ask him if he could have it 'So how did the stuff get to

Patin?' he asked Dussander.

'In railroad cars,' Dussander said. 'In railroad cars labelled MEDICAL

SUPPLIES. It came in long crates that looked like coffins. Fitting, I

suppose. The inmates off-loaded the crates and stacked them in the

infirmary. Later, our own men stacked them in the storage sheds. They did

it at night. The storage sheds were behind the showers.'

'Was it always Zyklon-B?'

'No, from time to time we would be sent something else. Experimental

gases. The High Command was always interested in improving efficiency.

Once they sent us a gas code-named PEGASUS. A nerve-gas. Thank God

they never sent it again. It -' Dussander saw Todd lean forward, saw those

eyes sharpen, and he suddenly stopped and gestured casually with his gas-

station-premium glass. 'It didn't work very well,' he said. 'It was quite

boring.'

But Todd was not fooled, not in the least. 'What did it do?'

'It killed them-what do you think it did, made them walk on water? It

killed them, that's all.'

'Tell me.'

'No,' Dussander said, now unable to hide the horror he felt. He hadn't

thought of PEGASUS in how long? Ten years? Twenty? 'I won't tell you! I

refuse!'

'Tell me,' Todd repeated, licking chocolate icing from his fingers. Tell me

or you know what.'

Yes, Dussander thought I know what. Indeed I do, you putrid little

monster. 'It made them dance,' he said reluctantly.

'Dance?'

'Like the Zyklon-B, it came in through the shower-heads. And they they

began to vomit, and to to defecate helplessly.'

'Wow,' Todd said. 'Shit themselves, huh?' He pointed at the Ring-Ding on

Dussander's plate. He had finished his own. 'You going to eat that?'

Dussander didn't reply. His eyes were hazed with memory. His face was

far away and cold, like the dark side of a planet which does not rotate.

Inside his mind he felt the queerest combination of revulsion and-could it

be?-nostalgia!

'They began to twitch all over and to make high, strange sounds in their

throats. My men they called PEGASUS the Yodeling Gas. At last they all

collapsed and just lay there on the floor in their own filth, they lay there,

yes, they lay there on the concrete, screaming and yodeling, with bloody

noses. But I lied, boy. The gas didn't kill them, either because it wasn't

strong enough or because we couldn't bring ourselves to wait long enough. I

suppose it was that. Men and women like that could not have lived long.

Finally I sent in five men with rifles to end their agonies. It would have

looked bad on my record if it had shown up, I've no doubt of that -it would

have looked like a waste of cartridges at a time when the Fuehrer had

declared every cartridge a national resource. But those five men I trusted.

There were times, boy,

when I thought I would never forget the sound they made. The yodeling

sound. The laughing.'

'Yeah, I bet,' Todd said. He finished Dussander's Ring-Ding in two bites.

Waste not, want not, Todd's mother said on the rare occasions when Todd

complained about left-overs. 'That was a good story, Mr Dussander. You

always tell them good. Once I get you going.' Todd smiled at him. And

incredibly-certainly not because he wanted to-Dussander found himself

smiling back.

November, 1974.

Dick Bowden, Todd's father, looked remarkably like a movie and TV

actor named Lloyd Bochner. He-Bowden, not Bochner-was thirty-eight. He

was a thin, narrow man who liked to dress in Ivy League style shirts and

solid-colour suits, usually dark. When he was on a construction site, he

wore khakis and a hard-hat that was a souvenir of his Peace Corps days,

when he had helped to design and build two dams in Africa. When he was

working in his study at home, he wore half-glasses that had a way of

slipping down to the end of his nose and making him look like a college

dean. He was wearing these glasses now as he tapped his son's first-quarter

report card against his desk's gleaming glass top. 'One B. Four Cs. One D.

A D, for Christ's sake! Todd, your mother's not showing it, but she's really

upset.'

Todd dropped his eyes. He didn't smile. When his dad swore, that wasn't

exactly the best of news.

'My God, you've never gotten a report like this. A D in Beginning

Algebra? What is this?'

'I don't know, Dad.' He looked humbly at his knees.

'Your mother and I think that maybe you've been spending a little too

much time with Mr Denker. Not hitting the books enough. We think you

ought to cut it down to weekends, slugger. At least until we see where

you're going academically '

Todd looked up, and for a single second Bowden thought he saw a wild,

pallid anger in his son's eyes. His own eyes widened, his fingers clenched

on Todd's buff-coloured report card and then it was just Todd, looking at

him openly if rather unhappily. Had that anger really been there? Surely not.

But the moment had unsettled him, made it hard for him to know exactly

how to proceed. Todd hadn't been mad, and Dick Bowden didn't want to

make him mad. He and his son were friends, always had been friends, and

Dick wanted things to stay that way. They had no secrets from each other,

none at all (except for the fact that Dick Bowden was sometimes unfaithful

with his secretary, but that wasn't exactly the sort of thing you told your

thirteen-year-old son, was it? and besides, that had absolutely no bearing

on his home life, his, family life). That was the way it was supposed to be,

the way it had to be in a cockamamie world where murderers went

unpunished, high-school kids skin-popped heroin, and junior high

schoolers-kids Todd's age-turned up with VD.

'No, Dad, please don't do that. I mean, don't punish Mr Denker for

something that's my fault. I mean, he'd be lost without me. I'll do better.

Really. That algebra it just threw me to start with. But I went over to Ben

Tremaine's, and after we studied together for a few days, I started to get it.

It just I dunno, I sorta choked at first.'

'I think you're spending too much time with him,' Bowden said, but he

was weakening. It was hard to refuse Todd, hard to disappoint him, and

what he said about

punishing the old man for Todd's falling-off goddammit, it made sense.

The old man looked forward to his visits so much.

'That Mr Storrman, the algebra teacher, is really hard,' Todd said. 'Lots of

kids got Ds. Three or four got Fs.'

Bowden nodded thoughtfully.

'I won't go Wednesdays anymore. Not until I bring my grades up.' He had

read his father's eyes. 'And instead of going out for anything at school, I'll

stay after every day and study. I promise.'

'You really like the old guy that much?'

'He's really neat,' Todd said sincerely.

'Well okay. We'll try it your way, slugger. But I want to see a big

improvement in your marks come January, you understand me? I'm thinking

of your future. You may think junior high's too soon to start thinking about

that, but it's not. Not by a long chalk.' As his mother liked to say Waste not,

want not, so Dick Bowden liked to say Not by a long chalk.

'I understand, dad,' Todd said gravely. Man to man stuff.

'Get out of here and give those books a workout then.' He pushed his

half-glasses up on his nose and clapped Todd on the shoulder.

Todd's smile, broad and bright, broke across his face. 'Right on, dad!'

Bowden watched Todd go with a prideful smile of his own. One in a

million. And that hadn't been anger on Todd's face. For sure. Pique, maybe

but not that high-voltage emotion he had at first thought he'd seen there. If

Todd was that mad, he would have known; he could read his son like a

book. It had always been that way.

Whistling, his fatherly duty discharged, Dick Bowden unrolled a

blueprint and bent over it 6 December, 1974.

The face that came in answer to Todd's insistent finger on the bell was

haggard and yellowed. The hair, which had been lush in July, had now

begun to recede from the bony brow; it looked lustreless and brittle.

Dussander's body, thin to begin with, was now gaunt although, Todd

thought, he was nowhere near as gaunt as the inmates who had once been

delivered into his hands.

Todd's left hand had been behind his back when Dussander came to the

door. Now he brought it out and handed a wrapped package to Dussander.

'Merry Christmas!' he yelled.

Dussander had cringed from the box; now he took it with no expression

of pleasure or surprise. He handled it gingerly, as if it might contain

explosive. Beyond the porch, it was raining. It had been raining off and on

for almost a week, and Todd had carried the box inside his coat. It was

wrapped in gay foil and ribbon.

'What is it?' Dussander asked without enthusiasm as they went to the

kitchen.

'Open it and see.'

Todd took a can of Coke from his jacket pocket and put it on the red and

white checked oilcloth that covered the kitchen table. 'Better pull down the

shades,' he said confidentially.

Distrust immediately leaked onto Dussander's face. 'Oh? Why?'

'Well you can never tell who's looking,' Todd said, smiling. 'Isn't that

how you got along all those years? By seeing the people who might be

looking before they saw you?'

Dussander pulled down the kitchen shades. Then he poured himself a

glass of bourbon.

Then he pulled the bow off the package. Todd had wrapped it the way

boys so often wrap Christmas packages-boys who have more important

things on their minds,

things like football and street hockey and the Friday Nite Creature

Feature you'll watch with a friend who's sleeping over, the two of you

wrapped in a blanket and crammed together on one end of the couch,

laughing. There were a lot of ragged corners, a lot of uneven seams, a lot of

Scotch tape. It spoke of impatience with such a womanly thing.

Dussander was a little touched in spite of himself. And later, when the

horror had receded a little, he thought: I should have known, It was a

uniform. An SS uniform. Complete with jackboots.

He looked numbly from the contents of, the box to its cardboard cover:

PETER'S QUALITY COSTUME CLOTHIERS-AT THE SAME

LOCATION SINCE 1951!

'No,' he said softly. 'I won't put it on. This is where it ends, boy. I'll die

before I put it on.'

'Remember what they did to Eichmann,' Todd said solemnly. 'He was an

old man and he had no politics. Isn't that what you said? Besides, I saved

the whole fall for it. It cost over eighty bucks, with the boots thrown in. You

didn't mind wearing it in 1944, either. Not at all.'

'You little bastard.' Dussander raised one fist over his head. Todd didn't

flinch at all. He stood his ground, eyes shining.

'Yeah,' he said softly. 'Go ahead and touch me. You just touch me once.'

Dussander lowered the hand. His lips were quivering. 'You are a fiend

from hell,' he muttered.

'Put it on,' Todd invited.

Dussander's hands went to the tie of his robe and paused there. His eyes,

sheeplike and begging, looked into Todd's. 'Please,' he said. 'I am an old

man. No more.'

Todd shook his head slowly but firmly. His eyes were still shining. He

liked it when Dussander begged. The way they must have begged him once.

The inmates at Patin.

Dussander let the robe fall to the floor and stood naked except for his

slippers and his boxer shorts. His chest was sunken, his belly slightly

bloated. His arms were scrawny old man's arms. But the uniform, Todd

thought The uniform will make a difference.

Slowly, Dussander took the tunic out of the box and began to put it on.

Ten minutes later he stood fully dressed in the SS uniform. The cap was

slightly askew, the shoulders slumped, but still the death's-head insignia

stood out clearly. Dussander had a dark dignity-at least in Todd's eyes-that

he had not possessed earlier. In spite of his slump, in spite of the cockeyed

angle of his feet, Todd was pleased. For the first time Dussander looked to

Todd as Todd believed he should look. Older, yes. Defeated, certainly. But

in uniform again. Not an old man spinning away his sunset years watching

Lawrence Welk on a cruddy black and white TV with tinfoil on the rabbit-

ears, but Kurt Dussander, the Blood Fiend of Patin.

As for Dussander, he felt disgust, discomfort and a mild, sneaking sense

of relief. He partly despised this latter emotion, recognizing it as the truest

indicator yet of the psychological domination the boy had established over

him. He was the boy's prisoner, and every time he found he could live

through yet another indignity, every time he felt that mild relief, the boy's

power grew. And yet he was relieved. It was only cloth and buttons and

snaps and it was a sham at that. The fly was a zipper; it should have been

buttons. The insignia was wrong, the tailoring sloppy, the boots a

cheap grade of imitation leather. It was only a trumpery uniform after ail,

and it wasn't exactly killing him, was it? No. It-'Straighten your cap!' Todd

said loudly.

Dussander blinked at him, startled.

'Straighten your cap, soldier.' Dussander did so, unconsciously giving it

that final small insolent twist that had been the trademark of his

Oberleutnants-and, sadly wrong as it was, this was a Oberleutnant's

uniform.

'Get those feet together!'

He did so, bringing the heels together with a smart rap, doing the correct

thing with hardly a thought, doing it as if the intervening years had slipped

off along with his bathrobe.

'Achtung?'

He snapped to attention, and for a moment Todd was scared-really

scared. He felt like the sorcerer's apprentice, who had brought the brooms to

life but who had not possessed enough skill to stop them once they got

started. The old man living on his pension was gone. Dussander was here.

Then his fear was replaced by a tingling sense of power.

'Aboutface!'

Dussander pivoted neatly, the bourbon forgotten, the torment of the last

three months forgotten. He heard his heels click together again as he faced

the grease-splattered stove.

Beyond it, he could see the dusty parade ground of the military academy

where he had learned his soldier's trade.

'About face!'

He whirled again, this time not executing the order as well, losing his

balance

a little.

Once it would have been ten demerits and the butt of a swagger-stick in

his belly, sending his breath out in a hot and agonized gust. Inwardly he

smiled a little. The boy didn't know all the tricks. No indeed.

'Now march!' Todd cried. His eyes were hot, glowing.

The iron went out of Dussander's shoulders; he slumped forward again.

'No,'

he said.

'Please -'

'March! March! March, I said!'

With a strangled sound, Dussander began to goose-step across the faded

linoleum of his kitchen floor. He right-faced to avoid the table; right-faced

again as he approached the wall. His face was uptilted slightly,

expressionless. His legs rammed out before him, then crashed down,

making the cheap china rattle in the cabinet over the sink. His arms moved

in short arcs.

The image of the walking brooms recurred to Todd, and his fright

recurred with it. It suddenly struck him that he didn't want Dussander to be

enjoying any part of this, and that perhaps-just perhaps-he had wanted to

make Dussander appear ludicrous even more than he had wanted to make

him appear authentic. But somehow, despite the man's age and the cheap

dime-store furnishings of the kitchen, he didn't look ludicrous in the least.

He looked frightening. For the first time the corpses in the ditches and the

crematoriums seemed to take on their own reality for Todd. The

photographs of the tangled arms and legs and torsos, fishbelly white in the

cold spring rains of Germany, were not something staged like a scene in a

horror film- a pile of bodies created from department store dummies, say, to

be picked up by the grips and propmen when the scene was done-but simply

a real fact, stupendous and

inexplicable and evil. For a moment it seemed to him that he could smell

the bland and slightly smoky odour of decomposition.

Terror gathered him in.

'Stop!' he shouted.

Dussander continued to goose-step, his eyes blank and far away. His head

had come up even more, pulling the scrawny chicken-tendons of his throat

tight, tilting his chin at an arrogant angle. His nose, blade-thin, jutted

obscenely.

Todd felt sweat in his armpits. 'Halt!' he cried out.

Dussander halted, right foot forward, left coming up and then down

beside the right with a single pistonlike stamp. For a moment the cold lack

of expression held on his face-robotic, mindless-and then it was replaced by

confusion. Confusion was followed by defeat. He slumped.

Todd let out a silent breath of relief and for a moment he was furious

with himself. 'Who's in charge here, anyway' Then his self-confidence

flooded back in. I am, that's who. And he better not forget it.

He began to smile again. 'Pretty good. But with a little practice, I think

you'll be a lot better.'

Dussander stood mute, his head hanging.

'You can take it off now,' Todd added generously and couldn't help

wondering if he really wanted Dussander to put it on again. For a few

seconds there-

January, 1975.

Todd left school by himself after the last bell, got his bike, and pedalled

down to the park.

He found a deserted bench, set his Schwinn up on its kickstand, and took

his report card out of his hip pocket. He took a look around to see if there

was anyone in the area he knew, but the only other people in sight were two

high school kids making out by the pond and a pair of gross-looking winos

passing a paper bag back and forth. Dirty fucking winos, he thought, but it

wasn't the winos that had upset him. He opened his card.

English: C. American History: C. Earth Science: D. Your Community

and You: B.

Primary French: F. Beginning Algebra: F.

He stared at the grades, unbelieving. He had known it was going to be

bad, but this was disaster.

Maybe that's best, an inner voice spoke up suddenly. Maybe you even did

it on purpose, because a part of you wants it to end. Needs for it to end.

Before something bad happens.

He shoved the thought roughly aside. Nothing bad was going to happen.

Dussander was under his thumb. Totally under his thumb. The old man

thought one of Todd's friends had a letter, but he didn't know which friend.

If anything happened to Todd-anything-that letter would go to the police.

Once he supposed Dussander might have tried it anyway. Now he was too

old to run, even with a head start.

'He's under control, dammit,' Todd whispered, and then pounded his thigh

hard enough to make the muscle knot. Talking to yourself was bad shit-

crazy people talked to themselves. He had picked up the habit over the last

six weeks or so, and didn't seem to be able to break it. He'd caught several

people looking at him strangely

because of it. A couple of them had been teachers. And that asshole

Bernie Everson had come right out and asked him if he was going

fruitcrackers. Todd had come very, very close to punching the little pansy in

the mouth, and that sort of stuff-brawls, scuffles, punch-outs-was no good.

That sort of stuff got you noticed in all the wrong ways. Talking to yourself

was bad, right, okay, but-'The dreams are bad, too,' he whispered. He didn't

catch himself that time. Just lately the dreams had been very bad. In the

dreams he was always in uniform and he was standing in line with hundreds

of gaunt men; the smell of burning was in the air and he could hear the

choppy roar of bulldozer engines. Then Dussander would come up the line,

pointing out this one or that one. They were left. The others were marched

away towards the crematoriums. Some of them kicked and struggled, but

most were too undernourished, too exhausted. Then Dussander was

standing in front of Todd. Their eyes met for a long, paralyzing moment,

and then Dussander levelled a faded umbrella at Todd.

'Take this one to the laboratories,' Dussander said in the dream. His lip

curled back to reveal his false teeth. 'Take this American boy'

In another dream he wore an SS uniform. His jackboots were shined to a

mirror-reflecting surface. The death's head insignia and the lightning bolts

glittered. But he was standing in the middle of Santa Donate Boulevard and

everyone was looking at him. They began to point. Some of them began to

laugh. Others looked shocked, angry, or revolted. In this dream an old car

came to a squealing, creaky halt and Dussander peered out at him, a

Dussander who looked two hundred years old and nearly mummified, his

skin a yellowed scroll.

'I know you!' The dream-Dussander proclaimed shrilly. He looked around

at the spectators and then back to Todd. 'You were in charge at Patin! Look,

everybody! This is the Blood-Fiend of Patin! Himmler's "Efficiency

Expert"! I denounce you, murderer! I denounce you, butcher! I denounce

you, killer of infants! I denounce you!' In yet another dream, he wore a

striped convict's uniform and was being led down a stone-walled corridor

by two guards who looked like his parents. Both wore conspicuous yellow

armbands with the Star of David on them. Walking behind them was a

minister, reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Todd looked back over

his shoulder and saw that the minister was Dussander, and he was wearing

the black cloak of an SS officer. At the end of the stone corridor, double

doors opened on an octagonal room with glass walls. There was a scaffold

in the centre of it. Behind the glass walls stood ranks of emaciated men and

women, all naked, all watching with the same dark, flat expression. On each

arm was a blue number.

'It's all right,' Todd whispered to himself. 'It's okay, really, everything's

under control.' The couple that had been making out glanced over at him.

Todd stared at them fiercely, daring them to say anything. At last they

looked back the other way. Had the boy been grinning?

Todd got up, jammed his report card into his hip pocket, and mounted his

bike. He pedalled down to a drugstore two blocks away. There he bought a

bottle of ink eradicator and a fine-point pen that dispensed blue ink. He

went back to the park (the make-out couple was gone, but the winos were

still there, stinking the place up) and changed his English grade to a B,

American History to A, Earth Science to B, Primary French to C, and

Beginning Algebra to B. Your Community and You he eradicated and then

simply wrote in again, so the card would have a uniform look. Uniforms,

right.

'Never mind,' he whispered to himself. 'That'll hold them. That'll hold

them, all right. ' One night late in the month, sometime after two o'clock,

Kurt Dussander awoke struggling with the bedclothes, gasping and

moaning, into a darkness that

seemed close and terrifying. He felt half-suffocated, paralyzed with fear.

It was as if a heavy stone lay on his chest, and he wondered if he could be

having a heart attack. He clawed in the darkness for the bedside lamp and

almost knocked it off the nightstand turning it on. I'm in my own room, he

thought, my own bedroom, here in Santa Donate, here in California, here in

America. See, the same brown drapes pulled across the same window, the

same bookshelves filled with dime paperbacks from the bookshop on Soren

Street, same grey rug, same blue wallpaper. No heart attack. No jungle. No

eyes. But the terror still clung to him like a stinking pelt, and his heart went

on racing. The dream had come back. He had known that it would, sooner

or later, if the boy kept on. The cursed boy. He thought the boy's letter of

protection was only a bluff, and not a very good one at that; something he

had picked up from the TV detective programmes. What friend would the

boy trust not to open such a momentous letter? No friend, that was who. Or

so he thought If he could be sure-His hands closed with an arthritic, painful

snap and then opened slowly. He took the packet of cigarettes from the

table and lit one, scratching the wooden match indifferently on the bedpost.

The clock's hands stood at 2:41. There would be no more sleep for him this

night He inhaled smoke and then coughed it out in a series of wracking

spasms. No more sleep unless he wanted to go downstairs and have a drink

or two. Or three. And there had been altogether too much drinking over the

last six weeks or so. He was no longer a young man who could toss them

off one after the other, the way he had when he had been an officer on leave

in Berlin in '39, when the scent of victory had been in the air and

everywhere you heard the Fuehrer's voice, saw his blazing, commanding

eyes-The boy the cursed boy!

'Be honest,' he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice in the quiet

room made him jump a little. He was not in the habit of talking to himself,

but neither was it the first time he had ever done so. He remembered doing

it off and on during the last few weeks at Patin, when everything had come

down around their ears and in the east the sound of Russian thunder grew

louder first every day and then every hour. It had been natural enough to

talk to himself then. He had been under stress, and people under stress often

do strange things-cup their testicles through the pockets of their pants, click

their teeth together Wolff had been a great teeth-clicker. He grinned as he

did it. Huffman had been a finger-snapper and a thigh-patter, creating fast,

intricate rhythms that he seemed utterly unaware of. He, Kurt Dussander,

had sometimes talked to himself. But now-'You are under stress again,' he

said aloud. He was aware that he had spoken in German this time. He hadn't

spoken German in many years, but the language now seemed warm and

comfortable. It lulled him, eased him. It was sweet and dark. 'Yes. You are

under stress. Because of the boy. But be honest with yourself. It is too early

in the morning to tell lies. You have not entirely regretted talking. At first

you were terrified that the boy could not or would not keep his secret. He

would have to tell a friend, who would tell another friend, and that friend

would tell two. But if he has kept it this long, he will keep it longer. If I am

taken away, he loses his his talking book. Is that what I am to him? I think

so.'

He fell silent, but his thoughts went on. He had been lonely -no one

would ever know just how lonely. There had been times when he thought

almost seriously of suicide. He made a bad hermit. The voices he heard

came from the radio. The only people who visited were on the other side of

a dirty glass square. He was an old man, and although he was afraid of

death, he was more afraid of being an old man who is alone. His bladder

sometimes tricked him. He would be halfway to the bathroom when a dark

stain spread on his pants. In wet weather his joints would first throb and

then begin to cry out, and there had been days when he had chewed an

entire tin of

Arthritis Pain Formula between sunrise and sunset and still the aspirin

only subdued the aches, and even such acts as taking a book from the shelf

or switching the TV channel became an essay in pain. His eyes were bad;

sometimes he knocked things over, barked his shins, bumped his head. He

lived in fear of breaking a bone and not being able to get to the telephone,

and he lived in fear of getting there and having some doctor uncover his

real past as he became suspicious of Mr. Denker's nonexistent medical

history. The boy had alleviated some of those things. When the boy was

here, he could call back the old days. His memory of those days was

perversely clear; he spilled out a seemingly endless catalogue of names and

events, even the weather of such and such a day. He remembered Private

Henreid, who manned a machine-gun in the north-east tower and the wen

Private Henreid had had between his eyes. Some of the men called him

Three-Eyes, or Old Cyclops. He remembered Kessel, who had a picture of

his girlfriend naked, lying on a sofa with her hands behind her head. Kessel

charged the men to look at it. He remembered the names of the doctors and

their experiments-thresholds of pain, the brainwaves of dying men and

women, physiological retardation, effects of different sorts of radiation,

dozens more. Hundreds more.

He supposed he talked to the boy as all old men talk, but he guessed he

was luckier than most old men, who had impatience, disinterest, or outright

rudeness for an audience. His audience was endlessly fascinated. Were a

few bad dreams too high a price to pay?

He crushed out his cigarette, lay looking at the ceiling for a moment, and

then swung his feet out onto the floor. He and the boy were loathesome, he

supposed, feeding off each other eating each other. If his own belly was

sometimes sour with the dark but rich food they partook of in his afternoon

kitchen, what was the boy's like? Did he sleep well? Perhaps not. Lately

Dussander thought the boy looked rather pale, and thinner than when he had

first come into Dussander's life. He walked across the bedroom and opened

the closet door. He brushed hangers to the right, reached into the shadows,

and brought out the sham uniform. It hung from his hand like a vulture-

skin. He touched it with his other hand. Touched it and then stroked it.

After a very long time he took it down and put it on, dressing slowly, not

looking into the mirror until the uniform was completely buttoned and

belted (and the sham fly zipped).

He looked at himself in the mirror, then, and nodded.

He went back to bed, lay down, and smoked another cigarette. When it

was finished, he felt sleepy again. He turned off the bedlamp, not believing

it, that it could be this easy.

But he was asleep five minutes later, and this time his sleep was

dreamless.

February, 1975.

After dinner, Dick Bowden produced a cognac that Dussander privately

thought dreadful.

But of course he smiled broadly and complimented it extravagantly.

Bowden's wife served the boy a chocolate malted. The boy had been

unusually quiet all through the meal. Uneasy? Yes. For some reason the boy

seemed very uneasy.

Dussander had charmed Dick and Monica Bowden from the moment he

and the boy had arrived. The boy had told his parents that Mr Denker's

vision was much worse than it actually was (which made poor old Mr

Denker in need of a seeing-eye dog, Dussander thought dryly), because that

explained all the reading the boy had supposedly been doing.

Dussander had been very careful about that, and he thought there had

been no

slips.

He was dressed in his best suit, and although the evening was damp, his

arthritis had been remarkably mellow -nothing but an occasional twinge.

For some absurd reason the boy had wanted him to leave his umbrella

home, but Dussander had insisted. All in all, he had had a pleasant and

rather exciting evening. Dreadful cognac or no, he had not been out to

dinner in nine years.

During the meal he had discussed the Essen Motor Works, the rebuilding

of postwar Germany-Bowden had asked several intelligent questions about

that, and had seemed impressed by Dussander's answers-and German

writers. Monica Bowden had asked him how he had happened to come to

America so late in life and Dussander, adopting the proper expression of

myopic sorrow, had explained about the death of his fictitious wife.

Monica Bowden was meltingly sympathetic.

And now, over the absurd cognac, Dick Bowden said: 'If this is too

personal, Mr Denker, please don't answer but I couldn't help wondering

what you did in the war.'

The boy stiffened ever so slightly.

Dussander smiled and felt for his cigarettes. He could see them perfectly

well, but it was important to make not the tiniest slip. Monica put them in

his hand.

Thank you, dear lady. The meal was superb. You are a fine cook. My own

wife never did better.'

Monica thanked him and looked flustered. Todd gave her an irritated

look.

'Not personal at all,' Dussander said, lighting his cigarette and turning to

Bowden. 'I was in the reserves from 1943 on, as were all able-bodied men

too old to be in the active services. By then the handwriting was on the wall

for the Third Reich, and for the madmen who created it. One madman in

particular, of course.'

He blew out his match and looked solemn.

'There was great relief when the tide turned against Hitler. Great relief.

Of course,' and here he looked at Bowden disarmingly, as man to man, 'one

was careful not to express such a sentiment. Not aloud.'

'I suppose not,' Dick Bowden said respectfully.

'No,' Dussander said gravely. 'Not aloud. I remember one evening when

four or five of us, all friends, stopped at a local ratskeller after work for a

drink-by then there was not always schnapps, or even beer, but it so

happened that night there were both. We had all known each other for

upwards of twenty years. One of our number, Hans Hassler, mentioned in

passing that perhaps the Fuehrer had been ill-advised to open a second front

against the Russians. I said, "Hans, God in Heaven, watch what you say!"

Poor Hans went pale and changed the subject entirely. Yet three days later

he was gone. I never saw him again, nor, as far as I know, did anyone else

who was sitting at our table that night.'

'How awful!' Monica said breathlessly. 'More cognac, Mr Denker?'

'No thank you,' he smiled at her. 'My wife had a saying from her mother:

"One must never overdo the sublime."'

Todd's small, troubled frown deepened slightly.

'Do you think he was sent to one of the camps?' Dick asked. 'Your friend

Hessler?'

'Hassler,' Dussander corrected gently. He grew grave. 'Many were. The

camps they will be the shame of the German people for a thousand years

to come. They are Hitler's real legacy.'

'Oh, I think that's too harsh,' Bowden said, lighting his pipe and puffing

out a choking cloud of Cherry Blend. 'According to what I've read, the

majority of the German people had no idea of what was going on. The

locals around Auschwitz thought it was a sausage plant.'

'Ugh, how terrible,' Monica said, and pulled a grimacing that's-enough-

of-that expression at her husband. Then she turned to Dussander and

smiled. 'I just love the smell of a pipe, Mr. Denker, don't you?'

'Indeed I do, madam,' Dussander said. He had just gotten an almost

insurmountable urge to sneeze under control.

Bowden suddenly reached across the table and clapped his son on the

shoulder. Todd jumped. 'You're awfully quiet tonight, son. Feeling all right?'

Todd offered a peculiar smile that seemed divided between his father and

Dussander. 'I feel okay. I've heard most of these stories before, remember.'

'Todd!' Monica said. That's hardly -'

'The boy is only being honest,' Dussander said. 'A privilege of boys

which men often have to give up. Yes, Mr Bowden?'

Dick laughed and nodded.

'Perhaps I could get Todd to walk back to my house with me now,'

Dussander said. 'I'm sure he has his studies.'

'Todd is a very apt pupil,' Monica said, but she spoke almost

automatically, looking at Todd in a puzzled sort of way. 'All As and Bs,

usually. He got a C in this last quarter, but he's promised to bring his French

up to snuff on his March report. Right, Todd-baby?'

Todd offered the peculiar smile again and nodded.: 'No need for you to

walk,' Dick said. 'I'll be glad to run you back to your place.'

'I walk for the air and the exercise,' Dussander said. 'Really, I must

insist unless Todd prefers not to.'

'Oh, no, I'd like a walk,' Todd said, and his mother and father beamed at

him.

They were almost to Dussander's corner when Dussander broke the

silence. It was drizzling, and he hoisted his umbrella over both of them.

And yet still his arthritis lay quiet, dozing. It was amazing.

'You are like my arthritis,' he said.

Todd's head came up. 'Huh?'

'Neither of you have had much to say tonight. What's got your tongue,

boy? Cat or cormorant?'

'Nothing,' Todd muttered. They turned down Dussander's street.

'Perhaps I could guess,' Dussander said, not without a touch of malice.

'When you came to get me, you were afraid I might make a slip "let the

cat out of the bag," you say here.

Yet you were determined to go through with the dinner because you had

run out of excuses to put your parents off. Now you are disconcerted that all

went well. Is that not the truth?'

'Who cares?' Todd said, and shrugged sullenly.

'Why shouldn't it go well?' Dussander demanded. 'I was dissembling

before you were born. You keep a secret well enough, I give you that. I give

it to you most graciously. But did you see me tonight? I charmed them.

Charmed them!'

Todd suddenly burst out: 'You didn't have to do that!'

Dussander came to a complete stop, staring at Todd.

'Not do it? Not? I thought that was what you wanted, boy! Certainly they

will offer no objections if you continue to come over and "read" to me.'

'You're sure taking a lot for granted!' Todd said hotly. 'Maybe I've got all I

want from you. Do you think there's anybody forcing me to come over to

your scuzzy house and watch you slop up booze like those old wino

pushbags that hang around the old trainyards? Is that what you think?' His

voice had risen and taken on a thin, wavering, hysterical note. 'Because

there's nobody forcing me. If I want to come, I'll come, and if I don't, I

won't.'

'Lower your voice. People will hear.'

'Who cares?' Todd said, but he began to walk again. This time he

deliberately walked outside the umbrella's span.

'No, nobody forces you to come,' Dussander said. And then he took a

calculated shot in the dark: 'In fact, you are welcome to stay away. Believe

me, boy, I have no scruples about drinking alone. None at all.'

Todd looked at him scornfully. 'You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

Dussander only smiled noncommitally.

'Well, don't count on it.' They had reached the concrete walk leading up

to Dussander's stoop. Dussander fumbled in his pocket for his latchkey. The

arthritis flared a dim red in the joints of his fingers and then subsided,

waiting. Now Dussander thought he understood what it was waiting for: for

him to be alone again. Then it could come out.

'I'll tell you something,' Todd said. He sounded oddly breathless. 'If they

knew what you were, if I ever told them, they'd spit on you and then kick

you out on your skinny old ass.

My mom might even take a butcher's knife to you. Her mother was part

Jewish, she told me once.'

Dussander looked at Todd closely in the drizzling dark. The boy's face

was turned defiantly up to his, but the skin was pallid, the sockets under the

eyes dark and slightly hollowed-the skin-tones of someone who has

brooded long while others are asleep.

'I am sure they would have nothing but revulsion for me,' Dussander said,

although he privately thought that the elder Bowden might stay his

revulsion to ask many of the questions his son had asked already. 'Nothing

but revulsion. But what would they feel for you, boy, when I told them you

had known about me for eight months and said nothing?'

Todd stared at him wordlessly in the dark. 'Come and see me if you

please,' Dussander said indifferently, 'and stay home if you don't.

Goodnight, boy.'

He went up the walk to his front door, leaving Todd standing in the

drizzle and looking after him with his mouth slightly ajar.

The next morning at breakfast, Monica said, 'Your dad liked Mr Denker a

lot, Todd. He said he reminded him of your grandfather.'

Todd muttered something unintelligible around his toast. Monica looked

at her son and wondered if he had been sleeping well. He looked pale. And

his grades had taken that inexplicable dip. Todd never got Cs.

'You feeling okay these days, Todd?'

He looked at her blankly for a moment, and then that radiant smile spread

over his face, charming her comforting her. There was a dab of strawberry

preserve on his chin.

'Sure,' he said. 'Four-oh.'

'Todd-baby,' she said.

'Monica-baby,' he responded, and they both started to laugh.

March, 1975.

'Kitty-kitty,' Dussander said. 'Heeere, kitty-kitty. Puss-puss? Puss-puss?'

He was sitting on his back stoop, a pink plastic bowl by his right foot.

The bowl was full of milk. It was 1:30 in the afternoon; the day was hazy

and hot. Brush-fires far to the west tinged the air with an autumnal smell

that jagged oddly against the calendar. If the boy was coming, he would be

here in another hour. But the boy didn't always come now.

Instead of seven days a week he came sometimes only four times, or five.

An intuition had grown in him, little by little, and his intuition told him that

the boy was having troubles of his own.

'Kitty-kitty,' Dussander coaxed. The stray cat was at the far end of the

yard, sitting in the ragged verge of weeds by Dussander's fence. It was a

torn, and every bit as ragged as the weeds it sat in. Every time he spoke, the

cat's ears cocked forward. Its eyes never left the pink bowl filled with milk.

Perhaps, Dussander thought, the boy was having troubles with his

studies. Or bad dreams. Or both.

The last made him smile.

'Kitty-kitty,' he called softly. The cat's ears cocked forward again. It didn't

move, not yet, but it continued to study the milk.

Dussander had certainly been afflicted with problems of his own. For

three weeks or so he had worn the SS uniform to bed like grotesque

pyjamas, and the uniform had warded off the insomnia and the bad dreams.

His sleep had been-at first-as sound as a lumberjack's. Then the dreams had

returned, not little by little, but all at once, and worse than ever before.

Dreams of running as well as the dreams of the eyes. Running through a

wet, unseen jungle where heavy leaves and damp fronds struck his face,

leaving trickles that felt like sap or blood. Running and running, the

luminous eyes always around him, peering soullessly at him, until he broke

into a clearing. In the darkness he sensed rather than saw the steep rise that

began on the clearing's far side. At the top of that rise was Patin, its low

cement buildings and yards surrounded by barbed wire and electrified wire,

its sentry towers standing like Martian dreadnoughts straight out of War of

the Worlds. And in the middle, huge stacks billowed smoke against the sky,

and below these brick columns were the furnaces, stoked and ready to go,

glowing in the night like the eyes of fierce demons. They had

told the inhabitants of the area that the Patin inmates made clothes and

candles, and of course the locals had believed that no more than the locals

around Auschwitz had believed that the camp was a sausage factory. It

didn't matter. Looking back over his shoulder in the dream, he would at last

see them coming out of hiding, the restless dead, the Juden, shambling

towards him with blue numbers glaring from the livid flesh of their

outstretched arms, their hands hooked into talons, their faces no longer

expressionless but animated with hate, lively with vengeance, vivacious

with murder. Toddlers ran beside their mothers and grandfathers were borne

up by their middle-aged children. And the dominant expression on all their

faces was desperation. Desperation? Yes. Because in the dreams he knew

(and so did they) that if he could climb the hill, he would be safe. Down

here in these wet and swampy lowlands, in this jungle where the night-

flowering plants extruded blood instead of sap, he was a hunted animal

prey. But up there, he was in command. If this was a jungle, then the camp

at the top of the hill was a zoo, all the wild animals safely in cages, he the

head keeper whose job it was to decide which would be fed, which would

live, which would be handed over to the vivisectionists, which would be

taken to the knacker's in the remover's van. He would begin to run up the

hill, running in all the slowness of nightmare. He would feel the first

skeletal hands close about his neck, feel their cold and stinking breath,

smell their decay, hear their birdlike cries of triumph as they pulled him

down with salvation not only in sight but almost at hand-'Kitty-kitty,'

Dussander called. 'Milk. Nice milk.'

The cat came at last. It crossed half of the back yard and then sat again,

but lightly, its tail twitching with worry. It didn't trust him; no. But

Dussander knew the cat could smell the milk and so he was sanguine.

Sooner or later it would come.

At Patin there had never been a contraband problem. Some of the

prisoners came in with their valuables poked far up their asses in small

chamois bags (and how often their valuables turned out not to be valuable at

all-photographs, locks of hair, fake jewellery), often pushed up with sticks

until they were past the point where even the long fingers of the trustee they

had called Stinky-Thumbs could reach. One woman, he remembered, had

had a small diamond, flawed, it turned out, really not valuable at all-but it

had been in her family for six generations, passed from mother to eldest

daughter (or so she said, but of course she was a Jew and all of them lied).

She swallowed it before entering Patin. When it came out in her waste, she

swallowed it again. She kept doing this, although eventually the diamond

began to cut her insides and she bled.

There had been other ruses, although most only involved petty items such

as a hoard of tobacco or a hair-ribbon or two. It didn't matter. In the room

Dussander used for prisoner interrogations there was a hotplate and a

homely kitchen table covered with a red checked cloth much like the one in

his own kitchen. There was always a pot of lamb stew bubbling mellowly

away on that hotplate. When contraband was suspected (and when was it

not) a member of the suspected clique would be brought to that room.

Dussander would stand them by the hotplate, where the rich fumes from the

stew wafted. Gently, he would ask them Who. Who is hiding gold? Who is

hiding jewellery? Who has tobacco?

Who gave the Givenet woman the pill for her baby? Who? The stew was

never specifically promised; but always the aroma eventually loosened their

tongues. Of course, a truncheon would have done the same, or a gun-barrel

jammed into their filthy crotches, but the stew was was elegant. Yes.

'Kitty-kitty,' Dussander called. The cat's ears cocked forward. It half-rose,

than half-remembered some long-ago kick, or perhaps a match that had

burned its whiskers, and it settled back on its haunches. But soon it would

move.

He had found a way of propitiating his nightmare. It was, in a way, no

more than wearing the SS uniform but raised to a greater power.

Dussander was pleased with himself, only sorry that he had never thought

of it before. He supposed he had the boy to thank for this new method of

quieting himself, for showing him that the key to the past's terrors was not

in rejection but in contemplation and even something like a friend's

embrace. It was true that before the boy's unexpected arrival last summer he

hadn't had any bad dreams for a long time, but he believed now that he had

come to a coward's terms with his past. He had been forced to give up a part

of himself. Now he had reclaimed it. 'Kitty-kitty,' called Dussander, and a

smile broke on his face, a kindly smile, a reassuring smile, the smile of all

old men who have somehow come through the cruel courses of life to a safe

place, still relatively intact, and with at least some wisdom. The tom rose

from its haunches, hesitated only a moment, longer, and then trotted across

the remainder of the back yard with lithe grace. It mounted the steps, gave

Dussander a final mistrustful look, laying back its chewed and scabby ears;

then it began to drink the milk.

'Nice milk,' Dussander said, pulling on the Playtex rubber gloves that had

lain in his lap all the while. 'Nice milk for a nice kitty.' He had bought these

gloves in the supermarket. He had stood in the express lane, and older

women had looked at him approvingly, even speculatively. The gloves were

advertised on TV. They had cuffs. They were so flexible you could pick up

a dime while you were wearing them.

He stroked the cat's back with one green finger and talked to it

soothingly. Its back began to arch with the rhythm of his strokes. Just before

the bowl was empty, he seized the cat. It came electrically alive in his

clenching hands, twisting and jerking, clawing at the rubber. Its body lashed

limberly back and forth, and Dussander had no doubt that if its teeth or

claws got into him, it would come off the winner. It was an old campaigner.

It takes one to know one, Dussander thought, grinning.

Holding the cat prudently away from his body, the painful grin stamped

on his face, Dussander pushed the back door open with his foot and went

into the kitchen. The cat yowled and twisted and ripped at the rubber

gloves. Its feral, triangular head flashed down and fastened on one green

thumb. 'Nasty kitty,' Dussander said reproachfully.

The oven door stood open. Dussander threw the cat inside. Its claws

made a ripping, prickly sound as they disengaged from the gloves.

Dussander slammed the oven door shut with one knee, provoking a painful

twinge from his arthritis. Yet he continued to grin. Breathing hard, nearly

panting, he propped himself against the stove for a moment, his head

hanging down. It was a gas stove. He rarely used it for anything fancier

than TV dinners, and now, killing stray cats. Faintly, rising up through the

gas burners, he could hear the cat scratching and yowling to be let out.

Dussander twisted the oven dial over to 500. There was an audible pop!

as the oven pilot light lit two double rows of hissing gas. The cat stopped

yowling and began to scream. It sounded yes almost like a young boy. A

young boy in terrible pain. The thought made Dussander smile even more

broadly. His heart thundered in his chest. The cat scratched and whirled

madly in the oven, still screaming. Soon, a hot, furry, burning smell began

to seep out of the oven and into the room.

He scraped the remains of the cat out of the oven half an hour later, using

a barbecue fork he had acquired for two dollars and ninety-eight cents at the

Grant's in the shopping center a mile away.

The cat's roasted carcass went into an empty flour sack. He took the sack

down to the cellar. The cellar floor had never been cemented. Shortly,

Dussander came back up. He sprayed the kitchen with Glade until it reeked

of artificial pine scent. He opened all the windows. He washed the barbecue

fork and hung it up on the pegboard. Then he sat down to wait and see if the

boy would come. He smiled and smiled.

Todd did come, about five minutes after Dussander had given up on him

for the afternoon. He was wearing a warmup jacket with his school colours

on it; he was also wearing a San Diego Padres baseball cap. He carried his

schoolbooks under his arm.

'Yucka-ducka,' he said, coming into the kitchen and wrinkling his nose.

'What's that smell? It's awful.'

'I tried the oven,' Dussander said, lighting a cigarette. 'I'm afraid I burned

my supper. I had to throw it out.'

One day late in the month the boy came much earlier than usual, long

before school usually let out. Dussander was sitting in the kitchen, drinking

Ancient Age bourbon from a chipped and discoloured cup that had the

words HERE'S YER CAWFEE MAW, HAW! HAW! HAW! written around

the rim. He had his rocker out in the kitchen now and he was just drinking

and rocking, rocking and drinking, bumping his slippers on the faded

linoleum. He was pleasantly high. There had been no more bad dreams at

all until just last night. Not since the tomcat with the chewed ears. Last

night's had been particularly horrible, though. That could not be denied.

They had dragged him down after he had gotten halfway up the hill, and

they had begun to do unspeakable things to him before he was able to wake

himself up. Yet, after his initial thrashing return to the world of real things,

he had been confident. He could end the dreams whenever he wished.

Perhaps a cat would not be enough this time. But there was always the

dog pound. Yes.

Always the pound.

Todd came abruptly into the kitchen, his face pale and shiny and strained.

He had lost weight, all right, Dussander thought And there was a queer

white look in his eyes that Dussander did not like at all.

'You're going to help me,' Todd said suddenly and defiantly.

'Really?' Dussander said mildly, but sudden apprehension leaped inside

of him. He didn't let his face change as Todd slammed his books down on

the table with a sudden, vicious overhand stroke. One of them spun-skated

across the oilcloth and landed in a tent on the floor by Dussander's foot.

'Yes, you're fucking-A right!' Todd said shrilly. 'You better believe it!

Because this is your fault! All your fault!' Hectic spots of red mounted into

his cheeks. 'But you're going to have to help me get out of it, because I've

got the goods on you! I've got you right where I want you-'

'I'll help you in any way I can,' Dussander said quietly. He saw that he

had folded his hands neatly in front of himself without even thinking about

it-just as he had once done. He leaned forward in the rocker until his chin

was directly over his folded hands-as he had once done. His face was calm

and friendly and inquiring; none of his growing apprehension showed.

Sitting just so, he could almost imagine a pot of lamb stew simmering on

the stove behind him. 'Tell me what the trouble is.'

'This is the fucking trouble,' Todd said viciously, and threw a folder at

Dussander. It bounced off his chest and landed in his lap, and he was

momentarily surprised by the heat of the anger which leaped up in him; the

urge to rise and

backhand the boy smartly. Instead, he kept the mild expression on his

face. It was the boy's school-card, he saw, although the school seemed to be

at ridiculous pains to hide the fact. Instead of a school-card, or a Grade

Report, it was called a 'Quarterly Progess Report'. He grunted at that, and

opened the card.

A typed half-sheet of paper fell out. Dussander put it aside for later

examination and turned his attention to the boy's grades first.

'You seem to have fallen on the rocks, my boy,' Dussander said, not

without some pleasure. The boy had passed only English and American

History. Every other grade was an F.

'It's not my fault,' Todd hissed venomously. 'It's your fault. All those

stories. I have nightmares about them, do you know that? I sit down and

open my books and I start thinking about whatever you told me that day and

the next thing I know, my mother's telling me it's time to go to bed. Well,

that's not my fault! It isn't! You hear me? It isn't!'

'I hear you very well,' Dussander said, and read the typed note that had

been tucked into Todd's card.

Dear Mr and Mrs Bowden,

This note is to suggest that we have a group conference concerning

Todd's second- and third-quarter grades. In light of Todd's previous good

work in this school, his current grades suggest a specific problem which

may be affecting his academic performance in a deleterious way. Such a

problem can often be solved by a frank and open discussion. I should point

out that although Todd has passed the half-year, his final grades may be

failing in some cases unless his work improves radically in the fourth

quarter. Failing grades would entail summer school to avoid being kept

back and causing a major scheduling problem.

I must also note that Toad is in the college division, and that his work so

far this year is far below college acceptance levels. It is also below the level

of academic ability assumed by the SAT tests.

Please be assured that I am ready to work out a mutually convenient time

for us to meet. In a case such as this, earlier is usually better.

Sincerely yours,

Edward French

'Who is this Edward French?' Dussander asked, slipping the note back

inside the card (part of him still marvelled at the American love of jargon;

such a rolling missive to inform the parents that their son was flunking out!)

and then refolding his hands. His premonition of disaster was stronger than

ever, but he refused to give in to it. A year before, he would have done; a

year ago he had been ready for disaster. Now he was not, but it seemed that

the cursed boy had brought it to him anyway. 'Is he your headmaster?'

'Rubber Ed? Hell, no. He's the guidance counsellor.'

'Guidance counsellor? What is that?'

'You can figure it out,' Todd said. He was nearly hysterical. 'You read the

goddam note!'

He walked rapidly around the room, shooting sharp, quick glances at

Dussander. 'Well, I'm not going to let any of this shit go down. I'm just not.

I'm not going to any summer school. My dad and mom are going to Hawaii

this summer and

I'm going with them.' He pointed at the card on the table. 'Do you know

what my dad will do if he sees that?'

Dussander shook his head.

'He'll get everything out of me. Everything. He'll know it was you. It

couldn't be anything else, because nothing else has changed. He'll poke and

pry and hell get it all out of me.

And then then I'll I'll be in Dutch.'

He stared at Dussander resentfully.

'They'll watch me. Hell, they might make me see a doctor, I don't know.

How should I know? But I'm not getting in Dutch. And I'm not going to any

fucking summer school.'

'Or to the reformatory,' Dussander said. He said it very quietly.

Todd stopped circling the room. His face became very still. His cheeks

and forehead, already pale, became even whiter. He stared at Dussander,

and had to try twice before he could speak. 'What? What did you just say?'

'My dear boy,' Dussander said, assuming an air of great patience, 'for the

last five minutes I have listened to you pule and whine, and what all your

puling and whining comes down to is this. You are in trouble. You might be

found out. You might find yourself in adverse circumstances.' Seeing that

he had the boy's complete attention-at last -Dussander sipped reflectively

from his cup.

'My boy,' he went on, 'that is a very dangerous attitude for you to have.

And dangerous for me. The potential harm is much greater for me. You

worry about your school-card.

Pah! This for your school-card.'

He flicked it off the table and onto the floor with one yellow finger.

'I am worried about my life!'

Todd did not reply; he simply went on looking at Dussander with that

white-eyed, slightly crazed stare.

'The Israelis will not scruple at the fact that I am seventy -six. The death

penalty is still very much in favour over there, you know, especially when

the man in the dock is a Nazi war criminal associated with the camps.'

'You're a US citizen,' Todd said. 'America wouldn't let them take you. I

read up on that. I -'

'You read, but you don't listen! I am not a US citizen! My papers came

from la cosa nostra. I would be deported, and Mossad agents would be

waiting for me wherever I deplaned.'

'I wish they would hang you,' Todd muttered, curling his hands into his

fists and staring down at them. 'I was crazy to get mixed up with you in the

first place.'

'No doubt,' Dussander said, and smiled thinly. 'But you are mixed up with

me. We must live in the present, boy, not in the past of "I-should-have-

nevers". You must realize that your fate and my own are now inextricably

entwined. If you "blow the horn on me", as your saying goes, do you think I

will hesitate to blow the horn on you? Seven hundred thousand died at

Patin. To the world at large I am a criminal, a monster, even the butcher

your scandal-rags would have me. You are an accessory to all of that, my

boy. You have criminal knowledge of an illegal alien, but you have not

reported it. And if I am caught, I will tell the world all about you. When the

reporters put their microphones in my face, it will be your name I'll repeat

over and over again. "Todd Bowden, yes, that is his name how long?

Almost a year. He wanted to know everything all the gooshy parts. That's

how he put it, yes: 'All the gooshy parts'."

Todd's breath had stopped. His skin appeared transparent. Dussander

smiled at him. He sipped bourbon.

'I think they will put you in jail. They may call it a reformatory, or a

correctional facility -there may be a fancy name for it, like this "Quarterly

Progress Report" -' his lip curled '-but no matter what they call it, there will

be bars on the windows.' Todd wet his lips. 'I'd call you a liar. I'd tell them I

just found out. They'd believe me, not you. You just better remember that.'

Dussander's thin smile remained. 'I thought you told me your father

would get it all out of you.'

Todd spoke slowly, as a person speaks when realization and verbalization

occur simultaneously. 'Maybe not. Maybe not this time. This isn't just

breaking a window with a rock.'

Dussander winced inwardly. He suspected that the boy's judgement was

right-with so much at stake, he might indeed be able to convince his father.

After all, when faced with such an unpleasant truth, what parent would not

want to be convinced? 'Perhaps. Perhaps not. But how are you going to

explain all those books you had to read to me because poor Mr Denker is

half blind? My eyes are not what they were, but I can still read fine print

with my spectacles. I can prove it.'

'I'd say you fooled me!'

'Will you? And what reason will you be able to give for my fooling?'

'For for friendship. Because you were lonely.'

That, Dussander reflected, was just close enough to the truth to be

believable. And once, in the beginning, the boy might have been able to

bring it off. But now he was ragged; now he was coming apart in strings

like a coat that has reached the end of its useful service. If a child shot off

his cap pistol across the street, this boy would jump into the air and scream

like a girl.

'Your school-card will also support my side of it,' Dussander said. 'It was

not Robinson Crusoe that caused your grades to fall down so badly, my boy,

was it?'

'Shut up, why don't you? Just shut up about it!'

'No,' Dussander said. 'I won't shut up about it.' He lit a cigarette,

scratching the wooden match alight on the gas oven door. 'Not until I make

you see the simple truth. We are in this together, sink or swim.' He looked at

Todd through the raftering smoke, not smiling, his old, lined face reptilian.

'I will drag you down, boy. I promise you that. If anything comes out,

everything will come out. That is my promise to you.' Todd stared at him

sullenly and didn't reply.

'Now,' Dussander said briskly, with the air of a man who has put a

necessary unpleasantness behind him, 'the question is, what are we going to

do about this situation? Have you any ideas?'

'This will fix the report card,' Todd said, and took a new bottle of ink

eradicator from his jacket pocket. 'About that fucking letter, I don't know.'

Dussander looked at the ink eradicator approvingly. He had falsified a few

reports of his own in his time. When the quotas had gone up to the point of

fantasy and far, far beyond. And-more like the situation they were now in-

there had been the matter of the invoices those which enumerated the

spoils of war. Each week he would check the boxes of valuables, all of them

to be sent back to Berlin in special train-cars that were like big Padd safes

on wheels. On the side of each box was a manilla envelope, and inside the

envelope there had been a verified invoice of that box's contents. So many

rings, necklaces, chokers, so many grams of gold. Dussander, however, had

had his own box of valuables-not very valuable valuables, but not

insignificant, either. Jades. Tourmalines.

Opals. A few flawed pearls. Industrial diamonds. And when he saw an

item invoiced for Berlin that caught his eye or seemed a good investment,

he would remove it, replace it with an item from his own box, and use ink

eradicator on the invoice, changing their item for his. He had developed

into a fairly expert forger a talent that had come in handy more than once

after the war was over.

'Good,' he told Todd. 'As for this other matter'

Dussander began to rock again, sipping from his cup. Todd pulled a chair

up to the table and began to go to work on his report-card, which he had

picked up from the floor without a word. Dussander's outward calm had had

its effect on him and now he worked silently, his head bent studiously over

the card, like any American boy who has set out to do the best by God job

he can, whether that job be planting corn, pitching a no-hitter in the Little

League World Series, or forging grades on his report-card.

Dussander looked at the nape of his neck, lightly tanned and cleanly

exposed between the fall of his hair and the round neck of his tee-shirt. His

eyes drifted from there to the top counter drawer where he kept the butcher

knives. One quick thrust-he knew where to put it-and the boy's spinal cord

would be severed. His lips would be sealed forever.

Dussander smiled regretfully. There would be questions asked if the boy

disappeared.

Too many of them. Some directed at him. Even if there was no letter with

a friend, close scrutiny was something he could not afford. Too bad.

'This man French,' he said, tapping the letter. 'Does he know your parents

in a social way?'

'Him?' Todd edged the word with contempt. 'My mom and dad don't go

anywhere that he could even get in.'

'Has he ever met them in his professional capacity? Has he ever had

conferences with them before?'

'No. I've always been near the top of my classes. Until now.'

'So what does he know about them?' Dussander said, looking dreamily

into his cup, which was now nearly empty. 'Oh, he knows about you. He no

doubt has all the records on you that he can use. Back to the fights you had

in the kindergarten play yard. But what does he know about them?'

Todd put his pen and the small bottle of ink eradicator away. 'Well, he

knows their names. Of course. And their ages. He knows we're all

Methodists. We don't go much, but he'd know that's what we are, because

it's on the forms. He must know what my dad does for a living; that's on the

forms, too. All that stuff they have to fill out every year. And I'm pretty sure

that's all.'

'Would he know if your parents were having troubles at home?'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Dussander tossed off the last of the bourbon in his cup. 'Squabbles.

Fights. Your father sleeping on the couch. Your mother drinking too much.'

His eyes gleamed. 'A divorce brewing.'

Indignantly, Todd said, "There's nothing like that going on! No way!'

'I never said there was. But just think, boy. Suppose that things at your

house were "going to hell in a streetcar", as the saying is.'

Todd only looked at him, frowning.

'You would be worried about them,' Dussander said. 'Very worried. You

would lose your appetite. You would sleep poorly. Saddest of all, your

schoolwork would suffer. True? Very sad for the children, when there are

troubles in the home.'

Understanding dawned in the boy's eyes-understanding and something

like dumb gratitude. Dussander was gratified.

'Yes, it is an unhappy situation when a family totters on the edge of

destruction,'

Dussander said grandly, pouring more bourbon. He was getting quite

drunk. 'The daytime television dramas, they make this absolutely clear.

There is acrimony. Backbiting and lies. Most of all, there is pain. Pain, my

boy. You have no idea of the hell your parents are going through. They are

so swallowed up by their own troubles that they have little time for the

problems of their own son. His problems seem minor compared to theirs,

hein?

Someday, when the scars have begun to heal, they will no doubt take a

fuller interest in him once again. But now the only concession they can

make is to send the boy's kindly grandfather to Mr. French.'

Todd's eyes had been gradually brightening to a glow that was nearly

fervid. 'Might work,' he was muttering. 'Might, yeah, might work, might -'

He broke off suddenly. His eyes darkened again. 'No, it won't You don't

look like me, not even a little bit. Rubber Ed will never believe it.'

'Himmel! Got im Himmel!' Dussander cried, getting to his feet, crossing

the kitchen (a bit unsteadily), opening one of the cupboards, and pulling

down his bottle of Ancient Age.

He spun off the cap and poured liberally. 'For a smart boy, you are such a

Dummkop. When do grandfathers ever look like their grandsons? Huh? I

am bald.' He pronounced it balt. 'Are you bald?'

Approaching the table again, he reached out with surprising quickness,

snatched an abundant handful of Todd's blond hair, and pulled briskly.

'Cut it out!' Todd snapped, but he smiled a little.

'Besides,' Dussander said, settling back into his rocker, 'you have blond

hair and blue eyes. My eyes are blue, and before my hair turned white and

fell out, it was blond. You can tell me your whole family history. Your aunts

and uncles. The people your father works with. Your mother's little hobbies.

I will remember. I will study and remember.

Two days later it will all be forgotten again-these days my memory is like

a cloth bag filled with water-but I will remember for long enough.' He

smiled grimly. 'In my time I have stayed ahead of Wiesenthal and pulled the

wool over the eyes of Himmler himself. If I cannot fool one American

public school teacher, I will pull my winding shroud around me and crawl

down into my grave.'

'Maybe,' Todd said slowly, and Dussander could see he had already

accepted it. His eyes were luminous with relief.

'There is another resemblance,' Dussander said.

'There is?'

'You said your mother was one-eighth a Jew. My mother was all Jewish.

We are both kikes, my boy. We are two mockies sitting in the kitchen, just

like in the old joke.' He suddenly grabbed his nose between the thumb and

index finger of his right hand. At the same time he reached over the table

and grabbed the boy's nose with his left hand. 'And it shows!' he roared. 'It

shows!'

He began to cackle with laughter, the rocking chair squeaking back and

forth. Todd looked at him, puzzled and a little frightened, but after a bit he

began to laugh, too. In Dussander's kitchen they laughed and laughed,

Dussander by the open window where the warm California breeze wafted

in, and Todd rocked back on the rear legs of his kitchen chair, so that its

back rested against the oven door, the white enamel of

which was crisscrossed by the dark, charred-looking streaks made by

Dussander's wooden matches as he struck them alight.

Rubber Ed French (his nickname, Todd had explained to Dussander,

referred to the rubbers he always wore over his sneakers during wet

weather) was a slight man who made an affectation of always wearing Keds

to school. It was a touch of informality which he thought would endear him

to the one hundred and six children between the ages of twelve and fourteen

who made up his counselling load. He had five pairs of Keds, ranging in

colour from Fast Track Blue to Screaming Yellow Zonkers, totally unaware

that behind his back he was known not only as Rubber Ed but as Sneaker

Pete and The Ked Man, as in The Ked Man Cometh. He had been known as

Pucker in college, and he would have been most humiliated of all to learn

that even that shameful fact had somehow gotten out.

He rarely wore ties, preferring turtle-neck sweaters. He had been wearing

these ever since the early sixties, when David McCallum had popularized

them in The Man from U. N. C. L. E. In his college days his classmates had

been known to spy him crossing the quad and remark, 'Here comes Pucker

in his U. N. C. L. E. sweater.' He had majored in Education Psychology, and

he privately considered himself to be the only good guidance counsellor he

had ever met. He had real rapport with his kids. He could get right down to

it with them; he could rap with them and be silently sympathetic if they had

to do some shouting and kick out the jams. He could get into their hangups

because he understood what a bummer it was to be thirteen when someone

was doing a number on your head and you couldn't get your shit together.

The thing was, he had a damned hard time remembering what it had been

like to be thirteen himself. He supposed that was the ultimate price you had

to pay for growing up in the fifties. That, and entering the brave new world

of the sixties nicknamed Pucker. Now, as Todd Bowden's grandfather came

into his office, closing the pebbled-glass door firmly behind him, Rubber

Ed stood up respectfully but was careful not to come around his desk to

greet the old man. He was aware of his sneakers. Sometimes the old-timers

didn't understand that the sneakers were a psychological aid with kids who

had teacher hangups-which was to say that some of the older folks couldn't

get behind a guidance counsellor in Keds.

This is one fine-looking dude, Rubber Ed thought. His white hair was

carefully brushed back. His three-piece suit was spotlessly clean. His dove-

grey tie was impeccably knotted. In his left hand he held a furled black

umbrella (outside, a light drizzle had been falling since the weekend) in a

manner that was almost military. A few years ago Rubber Ed and his wife

had gone on a Dorothy Sayers jag, reading everything by that estimable

lady that they could lay their hands upon. It occurred to him now that this

was her brainchild, Lord Peter Wimsey, to the life. It was Wimsey at

seventy-five, years after both Hunter and Harriet Vane had passed on to

their rewards. He made a mental note to tell Sondra about this when he got

home. 'Mr Bowden,' he said respectfully, and offered his hand.

'A pleasure,' Bowden said, and shook it Rubber Ed was careful not to put

on the firm and uncompromising pressure he applied to the hands of the

fathers he saw; it was obvious from the gingerly way the old boy offered it

that he had arthritis. 'A pleasure, Mr French,' Bowden repeated, and took a

seat, carefully pulling up the knees of his trousers. He propped the umbrella

between his feet and leaned on it, looking like an elderly, extremely urbane

vulture that had come in to roost in Rubber Ed French's office. He had the

slightest touch of an accent, Rubber Ed thought, but it wasn't the clipped

intonation of the British upper class, as Wimsey's would have been;

it was broader, more European. Anyway, the resemblance to Todd was

quite striking. Especially through the nose and eyes.

I'm glad you could come,' Rubber Ed told him, resuming his own seat,

'although in these cases the student's mother or father-'

This was the opening gambit, of course. Almost ten years of experience

in the counselling business had convinced him that when an aunt or an

uncle or a grandparent showed up for a conference, it usually meant trouble

at home-the sort of trouble that invariably turned out to be the root of the

problem. To Rubber Ed, this came as a relief. Domestic problems were bad,

but for a boy of Todd's intelligence, a heavy drug trip would have been

much, much worse.

'Yes, of course,' Bowden said, managing to look both sorrowful and

angry at the same time. 'My son and his wife asked me if I could come and

talk this sorry business over with you, Mr French. Todd is a good boy,

believe me. This trouble with his school marks is only temporary.'

'Well, we all hope so, don't we, Mr Bowden? Smoke if you like. It's

supposed to be off-limits on school property, but I'll never tell.'

'Thank you.' Mr Bowden took a half-crushed package of Camel cigarettes

from his inner pocket, put one of the last two zigzagging smokes in his

mouth, found a Diamond Blue-Tip match, scratched it on the heel of one

black shoe, and lit up. He coughed an old man's dank cough over the first

drag, shook the match out, and put the blackened stump into the ashtray

Rubber Ed had produced. Rubber Ed watched this ritual, which seemed

almost as formal as the old man's shoes, with frank fascination.

'Where to begin,' Bowden said, his distressed face looking at Rubber Ed

through a swirling raft of cigarette smoke.

'Well,' Rubber Ed said kindly, 'the very fact that you're here instead of

Todd's parents tells me something, you know.'

'Yes, I suppose it does. Very well.' He folded his hands. The Camel

protruded from between the second and third fingers of his right. He

straightened his back and lifted his chin. There was something almost

Prussian in his mental coming to terms, Rubber Ed thought, something that

made him think of all those war movies he'd seen as a kid. 'My son and my

daughter-in-law are having troubles in their home,' Bowden said, biting off

each word precisely. 'Rather bad troubles, I should think.' His eyes, old but

amazingly bright, watched as Rubber Ed opened the folder centred in front

of him on the desk blotter. There were sheets of paper inside, but not many.

'And you feel that these troubles are affecting Todd's academic

performance?'

Bowden leaned forward perhaps six inches. His blue eyes never left

Rubber Ed's brown ones. There was a heavily charged pause, and then

Bowden said: 'The mother drinks.'

He resumed his former ramrod-straight position.

'Oh,' Rubber Ed said.

'Yes,' Bowden replied, nodding grimly. 'The boy has told me that he has

come home on two occasions and has found her sprawled out on the kitchen

table. He knows how my son feels about her drinking problem, and so the

boy has put dinner in the oven himself on these occasions, and has gotten

her to drink enough black coffee so she will at least be awake when Richard

comes home.'

'That's bad,' Rubber Ed said, although he had heard worse-mothers with

heroin habits, fathers who had abruptly taken it into their heads to start

banging their daughters or their sons. 'Has Mrs Bowden thought about

getting professional help for her problem?'

'The boy has tried to persuade her that would be the best course. She is

much ashamed, I think. If she was given a little time' He made a gesture

with his cigarette that left a dissolving smoke-ring in the air. 'You

understand?'

'Yes, of course,' Rubber Ed nodded, privately admiring the gesture that

had produced the smoke-ring. 'Your son Todd's father'

'He is not without blame,' Bowden said harshly. The hours he works, the

meals he has missed, the nights when he must leave suddenly I tell you,

Mr French, he is more married to his job than he is to Monica. I was raised

to believe that a man's family came before everything. Was it not the same

for you?'

'It sure was,' Rubber Ed responded heartily. His father had been a night

watchman for a large Los Angeles department store and he had really only

seen his pop on weekends and vacations.

'That is another side of the problem,' Bowden said.

Rubber Ed nodded and thought for a moment. 'What about your other

son, Mr Bowden? Uh' He looked down at the folder. 'Harold. Todd's

uncle.'

'Harry and Deborah are in Minnesota now,' Bowden said, quite truthfully.

'He has a position there at the University medical school. It would be quite

difficult for him to leave, and very unfair to ask him.' His face took on a

righteous cast. 'Harry and his wife are quite happily married.'

'I see.' Rubber Ed looked at the file again for a moment and then closed

it. 'Mr Bowden, I appreciate your frankness. I'll be just as frank with you.'

'Thank you,' Bowden said stiffly.

'We can't do as much for our students in the counselling area as we would

like. There are six counsellors here, and we're each carrying a load of over a

hundred students. My newest colleague, Hepburn, has a hundred and

fifteen. At this age, in our society, all children need help.'

'Of course.' Bowden mashed his cigarette brutally into the ashtray and

folded his hands once more.

'Sometimes bad problems get by us. Home environment and drugs are the

two most common. At least Todd isn't mixed up with speed or mescaline or

PCP.'

'God forbid.'

'Sometimes,' Rubber Ed went on, 'there's simply nothing we can do. It's

depressing, but it's a fact of life. Usually the ones that are first to get spit out

of the machine we're running here are the class troublemakers, the sullen,

uncommunicative kids, the ones who refuse to even try. They are simply

warm bodies waiting for the system to buck them up through the grades or

waiting to get old enough so they can quit without their parents' permission

and join the army or get a job at the Speedy-Boy Carwash or marry their

boyfriends. You understand? I'm being blunt. Our system is, as they say, not

all it's cracked up to be.'

'I appreciate your frankness.'

'But it hurts when you see the machine starting to mash up someone like

Todd. He ran out a 92 average for last year's work, and that puts him in the

ninety-fifth percentile. His English averages are even better. He shows a

flair for writing, and that's something special in a generation of kids that

thinks culture begins in front of the TV and ends in the neighbourhood

movie theatre. I was talking to the woman who had Todd in Comp last year.

She said Todd passed in the finest term-paper she'd seen in twenty years of

teaching. It was on the German death-camps during World War II. She gave

him the only A-plus she's ever given a composition student.'

'I have read it,' Bowden said. 'It is very fine.'

'He has also demonstrated above-average ability in the life sciences and

social sciences, and while he's not going to be one of the great math

whizzes of the century, all the notes I have indicate that he's given it the

good old college try until this year. Until this year. That's the whole story,

in a nutshell.'

'Yes.'

'I hate like hell to see Todd go down the tubes this way, Mr Bowden. And

summer school well, I said I'd be frank. Summer school often does a boy

like Todd more harm than good. Your usual junior high school summer

session is a zoo. All the monkeys and the laughing hyenas are in attendance,

plus a full complement of dodo birds. Bad company for a boy like Todd.'

'Certainly.'

'So let's get to the bottom line, shall we? I suggest a series of

appointments for Mr and Mrs Bowden at the Counselling Centre

downtown. Everything in confidence, of course. The man in charge down

there, Harry Ackerman, is a good friend of mine. And I don't think Todd

should go to them with the idea; I think you should.' Rubber Ed smiled

widely. 'Maybe we can get everybody back on track by June. It's not

impossible.'

But Bowden looked positively alarmed by this idea.

'I believe they might resent the boy if I took that proposal to them now,'

he said. 'Things are very delicate. They could go either way. The boy has

promised me he will work harder in his studies. He is very alarmed at this

drop in his marks.' He smiled thinly, a smile Ed French could not quite

interpret. 'More alarmed than you know.'

'But-'

'And they would resent me' Bowden pressed on quickly. 'God knows they

would. Monica already regards me as something of a meddler. I try not to

be, but you see the situation. I feel that things are best left alone for now.'

'I've had a great deal of experience in these matters,' Rubber Ed told

Bowden. He folded his hands on Todd's file and looked at the old man

earnestly. 'I really think counselling is in order here. You'll understand that

my interest in the marital problems your son and daughter-in-law are having

begins and ends with the effect they're having on Todd and right now,

they're having quite an effect.'

'Let me make a counter-proposal,' Bowden said. 'You have, I believe, a

system of marking halfway through each quarter?'

'Yes,' Rubber Ed agreed cautiously. 'Interpretation of Progress cards-IOP

Cards. The kids, of course, call them Flunk Cards. They only get them if

their grade in a given course is below 78 halfway through the quarter. In

other words, we give out IOP cards to kids who are pulling a D or an F in a

given course.'

'Very good,' Bowden said. "Then what I suggest is this: If the boy gets

one of those cards even one-He held up one gnarled finger '-I will

approach my son and his wife about your counselling. I will go further.' He

pronounced it furdah. 'If the boy receives one of your Flunk Cards in April -

'We give them out the first week in May, actually.'

'Yes? If he receives one then, I guarantee that they will accept the

counselling proposal. They are worried about their son, Mr French. But

now they are so wrapped up in their own problem that' He shrugged.

'I understand.'

'So let us give them that long to solve their own problems. Pulling one's

self up by one's own shoelaces that is the American way, is it not?'

'Yes, I guess it is,' Rubber Ed told him after a moment's thought and

after a quick glance at the clock, which told him he had another

appointment in five minutes. 'I'll accept that.'

He stood, and Bowden stood with him. They shook hands again, Rubber

Ed being carefully mindful of the old party's arthritis.

'But in all fairness, I ought to tell you that very few students can pull out

of an eighteen-week tailspin in just five weeks of classes. There's a huge

amount of ground to be made up-a huge amount. I suspect you'll have to

come through on your guarantee, Mr Bowden.'

Bowden offered his thin, disconcerting smile again. 'Do you?' was all he

said. Something had troubled Rubber Ed through the entire interview, and

he put his finger on it during lunch in the cafeteria, more than an hour after

'Lord Peter' had left, umbrella once again neatly tucked under his arm.

He and Todd's grandfather had talked for fifteen minutes at least,

probably closer to twenty, and Ed didn't think the old man had once referred

to his grandson by name. Todd pedalled breathlessly up Dussander's walk

and parked his bike on its kickstand. School had let out only fifteen minutes

before. He took the front steps at one jump, used his doorkey, and hurried

down the hall to the sunlit kitchen. His face was a hopeful landscape of

hopeful sunshine and gloomy clouds. He stood in the kitchen doorway for a

moment, his stomach and his vocal cords knotted, watching Dussander as

he rocked with his cupful of bourbon in his lap. He was still dressed in his

best, although he had pulled his tie down two inches and loosened the top

button of his shirt He looked at Todd expressionlessly, his lizard-like eyes at

halfmast. 'Well,' Todd finally managed.

Dussander left him hanging a moment longer, a moment that seemed at

least ten years long to Todd. Then, deliberately, Dussander set his cup on

the table next to his bottle of Ancient Age and said: 'The fool believed

everything.'

Todd let out his pentup breath in a whooping gust of relief.

Before he could draw another breath in, Dussander added: 'He wanted

your poor, troubled parents to attend counselling sessions downtown with a

friend of his. He was really quite insistent'

'Jesus! Did you what did you how did you handle it?'

'I thought quickly,' Dussander replied. 'Like the little girl in the Saki

story, invention on short notice is one of my strong points. I promised him

your parents would go in for such counselling if you received one Flunk

Card when they are given out the first week of May.'

The blood fell out of Todd's face.

'You did what?' he nearly screamed. 'I've already flunked two algebra

quizzes and a history test since the marking period started!' He advanced

into the room, his pale face now growing shiny with breaking sweat. 'There

was a French quiz this afternoon and I flunked that too I know I did. All I

could think about was that godamned Rubber Ed and whether or not you

were taking care of him. You took care of him, all right,' he finished bitterly.

'Not get one Flunk Card? I'll probably get five or six.'

'It was the best I could do without arousing suspicions,' Dussander said.

'This French, fool that he is, is only doing his job. Now you will do yours.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Todd's face was ugly and thunderous, his

voice truculent

'You will work. In the next four weeks you will work harder than you

have ever worked in your life. Furthermore, on Monday you will go to each

of your instructors and apologize to them for your poor showing thus far.

You will -'

'It's impossible,' Todd said. 'You don't get it, man. It's impossible. I'm at

least five weeks behind in science and history. In algebra it's more like ten.'

'Nevertheless,' Dussander said. He poured more bourbon.

'You think you're pretty smart, don't you?' Todd shouted at him. 'Well, I

don't take orders from you. The days when you gave orders are long over.

Do you get it? He lowered his voice abruptly. "The most lethal thing you've

got around the house these days is a Shell No-Pest Strip. You're nothing but

a broken-down old man who farts rotten eggs if he eats a taco. I bet you

even pee in your bed.'

'Listen to me, snotnose,' Dussander said quietly.

Todd's head jerked angrily around at that.

'Before today,' Dussander said carefully, 'it was possible, just barely

possible, that you could have denounced me and come out clean yourself. I

don't believe you would have been up to the job with your nerves in their

present state, but never mind that. It would have been technically possible.

But now things have changed. Today I impersonated your grandfather, one

Victor Bowden. No one can have the slightest doubt that I did it with how

is the word? your connivance. If it comes out now, boy, you will look

blacker than ever. And you will have no defence. I took care of that today.'

'I wish-'

'You wish! You wish!' Dussander roared. 'Never mind your wishes, your

wishes make me sick, your wishes are no more than little piles of dogshit in

the gutter! All I want from you is to know if you understand the situation

we are in?'

'I understand it,' Todd muttered. His fists had been tightly clenched while

Dussander shouted at him-he was not used to being shouted at. Now he

opened his hands and dully observed that he had dug bleeding half-moons

into his palms. The cuts would have been worse, he supposed, but in the last

four months or so he had taken up biting his nails.

'Good. Then you will make your sweet apologies, and you will study. In

your free time at school you will study. During your lunch hours you will

study. After school you will come here and study, and on your weekends

you will come here and do more of the same.'

'Not here,' Todd said quickly. 'At home.'

'No. At home you will dawdle and daydream as you have all along. If

you are here I can stand over you if I have to and watch you. I can protect

my own interests in this matter. I can quiz you. I can listen to your lessons.'

'If I don't want to come here, you can't make me.'

Dussander drank. 'That is true. Things will then go on as they have. You

will fail. This guidance person, French, will expect me to make good on my

promise. When I don't, he will call your parents. They will find out that

kindly Mr Denker impersonated your grandfather at your request. They will

find out about the altered grades. They -'

'Oh, shut up. I'll come.'

'You're already here. Begin with algebra.'

'No way! It's Friday afternoon!'

'You study every afternoon now,' Dussander said softly. 'Begin with

algebra.'

Todd stared at him-only for a moment before dropping his eyes and

fumbling his algebra text out of his bookbag -and Dussander saw murder in

the boy's eyes. Not

figurative murder; literal murder. It had been years since he had seen that

dark, burning, speculative glance, but one never forgot it. He supposed he

would have seen it in his own eyes if there had been a mirror at hand on the

day he had looked at the white and defenceless nape of the boy's neck.

I must protect mysetf, he thought with some amazement. One

underestimates at one's own risk.

He drank his bourbon and rocked and watched the boy study.

It was nearly five o'clock when Todd biked home. He felt washed out,

hot-eyed, drained, impotently angry. Every time his eyes had wandered

from the printed page-from the maddening, incomprehensible, fucking

stupid world of sets, subsets, ordered pairs, and Cartesian co-ordinates -

Dussander's sharp old man's voice had spoken. Otherwise he had remained

completely silent except for the maddening bump of his slippers on the

floor and the squeak of the rocker. He sat there like a vulture waiting for its

prey to expire.

Why had he ever gotten into this? How had he gotten into it? This was a

mess, a terrible mess. He had picked up some ground this afternoon-some

of the set theory that had stumped him so badly just before the Christmas

break had fallen into place with an almost audible click-but it was

impossible to think he could pick up enough to scrape through next week's

algebra test with even a D.

It was five weeks until the end of the world.

On the corner he saw a bluejay lying on the sidewalk, its beak slowly

opening and closing. It was trying vainly to get onto its birdy-feet and hop

away. One of its wings had been crushed, and Todd supposed a passing car

had hit it and flipped it up onto the sidewalk like a tiddlywink. One of its

beady eyes stared up at him.

Todd looked at it for a long time, holding the grips of his bike's

apehanger handlebars lightly. Some of the warmth had gone out of the day

and the air felt almost chilly. He supposed his friends had spent the

afternoon goofing off down at the Babe Ruth diamond on Walnut Street,

maybe playing a little one-on-one, more likely playing pepper or three-flies-

six-grounders or roily-bat. It was the time of year when you started working

your way up to baseball. There was some talk about getting up their own

sandlot team this year to compete in the informal city league; there were

dads enough willing to shlepp them around to games. Todd, of course,

would pitch. He had been a Little League pitching star until he had grown

out of the Senior Little League division last year. Would have pitched.

So what? He'd just have to tell them no. He'd just have to tell them:

Guys, I got mixed up with this war criminal. I got him right by the balls,

and then-ha-ha, this'll killya, guys -then I found out he was holding my

balls as tight as I was holding his. I started having funny dreams and the

cold sweats. My grades went to hell and I changed them on my report card

so my folks wouldn't find out and now I've got to hit the books really hard

for the first time in my life. I'm not afraid of getting grounded, though. I'm

afraid of going to the reformatory. And that's why I can't play any sandlot

with you guys this year. You see how it is, guys.

A thin smile, much like Dussander's and not at all like his former broad

grin, touched his lips. There was no sunshine in it; it was a shady smile.

There was no fun in it; no confidence. It merely said, You see how it is,

guys.

He rolled his bike forward over the jay with exquisite slowness, hearing

the newspaper crackle of its feathers and the crunch of its small hollow

bones as they fractured inside it. He reversed, rolling over it again. It was

still twitching. He rolled over it again, a single bloody feather stuck in his

front tire, revolving up and down, up and down. By then the bird had

stopped moving, the bird had kicked the bucket, the

bird had punched out, the bird had gone to the great aviary in the sky, but

Todd kept going forward and backward across its mashed body just the

same. He did it for almost five minutes, and that thin smile never left his

face. You see how it is, guys.

April, 1975.

The old man stood halfway down the compound's aisle, smiling broadly,

as Dave Klingerman walked up to meet him. The frenzied barking that

filled the air didn't seem to bother him in the slightest, nor the smells of fur

and urine, nor the hundred different strays yapping and howling in their

cages, dashing back and forth, leaping against the mesh. Klingerman

pegged the old guy as a dog-lover right off the bat. His smile was sweet and

pleasant. He offered Dave a swollen, arthritis-bunched hand carefully, and

Klingerman shook it in the same spirit. 'Hello, sir!' he said, speaking up.

'Noisy as hell, isn't it?'

'I don't mind,' the old man said. 'Not at all. My name is Arthur Denker.'

'Klingerman. Dave Klingerman.'

'I am pleased to meet you, sir. I read in the paper -I could not believe it-

that you give dogs away here. Perhaps I misunderstood. In fact I think I

must have misunderstood.'

'No, we give 'em away, all right,' Dave said. 'If we can't we have to

destroy 'em. Sixty days, that's what the state gives us. Shame. Come on in

the office here. Quieter. Smells better, too.'

In the office, Dave heard a story that was familiar (but nonetheless

affecting): Arthur Denker was in his seventies. He had come to California

when his wife died. He was not rich, but he tended what he did have with

great care. He was lonely. His only friend was the boy who sometimes came

to his house and read to him. In Germany he had owned a beautiful St

Bernard. Now, in Santa Donato, he had a house with a good-sized back

yard.

The yard was fenced. And he had read in the paper would it be possible

that he could

'Well, we don't have any Bernards,' Dave said. 'They go fast because

they're so good with kids -'

'Oh, I understand. I didn't mean that-'

'- but I do have a half-grown Shepherd pup. How would that be?'

Mr Denker's eyes grew bright, as if he might be on the verge of tears.

'Perfect,'

he said.

'That would be perfect.'

The dog itself is free, but there are a few other charges. Distemper and

rabies shots. A city dog licence. All of it goes about twenty-five bucks for

most people, but the state pays half if you're over sixty-five-part of the

California Golden Ager programme.'

'Golden Ager is that what I am?' Mr. Denker said, and laughed. For just

a moment-it was silly-Dave felt a kind of chill.

'Uh I guess so, sir.'

'It is very reasonable.'

'Sure, we think so. The same dog would cost you a hundred and twenty-

five dollars in a pet shop. But people go to those places instead of here.

They are paying

for a set of papers, of course, not the dog.' Dave shook his head. 'If they

only understood how many fine animals are abandoned every year.'

'And if you can't find a suitable home for them within sixty days, they are

destroyed?'

'We put them to sleep, yes.'

'Put them to? I'm sorry, my English -'

'It's a city ordinance,' Dave said. 'Can't have dog-packs running the

streets.'

'You shoot them.'

'No, we give them gas. It's very humane. They don't feel a thing.'

'No,' Mr Denker said. 'I am sure they don't'

Todd's seat in Introduction to Algebra was four desks down in the second

row. He sat there, trying to keep his face expressionless, as Mr Storrman

passed back the exams. But his ragged fingernails were digging into his

palms again, and his entire body seemed to be running with a slow and

caustic sweat.

Don't get your hopes up. Don't be such a goddam chump. There's no way

you could have passed. You know you didn't pass.

Nevertheless, he could not completely squash the foolish hope. It had

been the first algebra exam in weeks that looked as if it had been written in

something other than Greek. He was sure that in his nervousness

(nervousness? no, call it what it had really been: outright terror) he had not

done that well, but maybe well, if it had been anyone else but Storrman,

who had a Yale padlock for a heart

STOP IT! he commanded himself, and for a moment, a coldly horrible

moment, he was positive he had screamed those two words aloud in the

classroom. You flunked, you know you did, not a thing in the world is

going to change it.

Storrman handed him his paper expressionlessly and moved on. Todd

laid it face-down on his initial-scarred desk. For a moment he didn't think

he possessed sufficient will to even turn it over and know. At last he flipped

it with such convulsive suddenness that the exam sheet tore. His tongue

stuck to the roof of his mouth as he stared at it. His heart seemed to stop for

a moment.

The number 83 was written in a circle at the top of the sheet. Below it

was a letter-grade: C Plus. Below the letter grade was a brief notation: Good

improvement! I think I'm twice as relieved as you should be. Check errors

carefully. At least three of them are arithmetical rather than conceptual.

His heartbeat began again, at triple-time. Relief washed over him, but it

was not cool-it was hot and complicated and strange. He closed his eyes,

not hearing the class as it buzzed over the exam and began the pre-ordained

fight for an extra point here or there.

Todd saw redness behind his eyes. It pulsed like flowing blood with the

rhythm of his heartbeat. In that instant he hated Dussander more than he

ever had before. His hands snapped shut into fists and he only wished,

wished, wished, that Dussander's scrawny chicken neck could have been

between them.

Dick and Monica Bowden had twin beds, separated by a nightstand with

a pretty imitation Tiffany lamp standing on it. Their room was done in

genuine redwood, and the walls were comfortably lined with books. Across

the room, nestled between two ivory bookends (bull elephants on their hind

legs) was a round Sony TV. Dick was watching Johnny Carson with the

earplugs in while Monica read the new Michael Crichton that had come

from the book club that day.

'Dick?' She put a bookmark (THIS IS WHERE I FELL ASLEEP, it said)

into the Crichton and closed it.

On the TV, Buddy Hackett had just broken everyone up. Dick smiled.

'Dick?' she said more loudly.

He pulled the earplugs out. 'What?'

'Do you think Todd's all right?'

He looked at her for a moment, frowning, then shook his head a little. 'Je

ne comprends pas, cherie.' His limping French was a joke between them; he

had met her in college when he was flunking his language requirement. His

father had sent him an extra two hundred dollars to hire a tutor. He had

gotten Monica Darrow, picking her name at random from the cards tacked

up on the Union bulletin board. By Christmas she had been wearing his

pin and he had managed a C in French.

'Well he's lost weight.'

'He looks a little scrawny, sure,' Dick said. He put the TV earplugs in his

lap, where they emitted tiny squawking sounds. 'He's growing up, Monica.'

'So soon?' she asked uneasily.

He laughed. 'So soon. I shot up seven inches as a teenager-from a five-

foot-six shrimp at twelve to the beautiful six-foot-one mass of muscle you

see before you today. My mother said that when I was fourteen you could

hear me growing in the night'

'Good thing not all of you grew that much.'

'It's all in how you use it.'

'Want to use it tonight?'

'The wench grows bold,' Dick Bowden said, and threw the earplugs

across the

room.

After, as he was drifting off to sleep: 'Dick, he's having bad dreams, too.'

'Nightmares?' he muttered.

'Nightmares. I've heard him moaning in his sleep two or three times when

I've gone down to use the bathroom in the night. I didn't want to wake him

up. It's silly, but my grandmother used to say you could drive a person

insane if you woke them up in the middle of a bad dream.'

'She was the Polack, wasn't she?'

'The Polack, yeah, the Polack. The mockie, why don't you say? Nice

talk!'

'You know what I mean. Why don't you just use the upstairs John?' He

had put it in himself two years ago.

'You know the flush always wakes you up,' she said.

'So don't flush it.'

'Dick, that's nasty.'

He sighed.

'Sometimes when I go in, he's sweating. And the sheets are damp.'

He grinned in the dark. 'I bet.'

'What's that oh.' She slapped him lightly. "That's nasty, too. Besides,

he's only thirteen.'

'Fourteen next month. He's not too young. A little precocious, maybe, but

not too young.'

'How old were you?'

'Fourteen or fifteen. I don't remember exactly. But I remember I woke up

thinking I'd died and gone to heaven.'

'But you were older than Todd is now.'

'All that stuffs happening younger. It must be the milk or the fluoride.

Do you know they have sanitary napkin dispensers in all the girls' rooms of

the school we built in Jackson Park last year? And that's a grammar school.

Now your average sixth-grader is only ten. How old were you when you

started?'

'I don't remember,' she said. 'All I know is Todd's dreams don't sound

like like he died and went to heaven.'

'Have you asked him about them?'

'Once. About six weeks ago. You were off playing golf with that horrible

Ernie Jacobs.'

'That horrible Ernie Jacobs is going to make me a full partner by 1977, if

he doesn't screw himself to death with that high yellow secretary of his

before then. Besides, he always pays the greens' fees. What did Todd say?'

'That he didn't remember. But a sort of shadow crossed his face. I think

he did remember.'

'Monica, I don't remember everything from my dear dead youth, but one

thing I do remember is that wet dreams are not always pleasant In fact, they

can be downright unpleasant.'

'How can that be?'

'Guilt All kinds of guilt. Some of it maybe all the way from babyhood,

when it was made very clear to him that wetting the bed was wrong. Then

there's the sex thing. Who knows what brings a wet dream on? Copping a

feel on the bus? Looking up a girl's skirt in study hall? I don't know. The

only one I can really remember was going off the high board at the YMCA

pool on coed day and losing my trunks when I hit the water.'

'You got off on that?' she asked, giggling a little.

'Yeah. So if the kid doesn't want to talk to you about his John Thomas

problems, don't force him.'

'We did our damn best to raise him without all those needless guilts.'

'You can't escape them. He brings them home from school like the colds

he used to pick up in the first grade. From his friends, or the way his

teachers mince around certain subjects. He probably got it from my dad,

too. "Don't touch it in the night, Todd, or your hands'!! grow hair and you'll

go blind and you'll start to lose your memory, and after a while your thing

will turn black and rot off. So be careful, Todd."'

'Dick Bowden! Your dad would never -'

'He wouldn't? Hell, he did. Just like your Jewish-Polack grandmother told

you that waking somebody up in the middle of a nightmare might drive

them nuts. He also told me to always wipe off the ring of a public toilet

before I sat on it so I wouldn't get "other people's germs". I guess that was

his way of saying syphilis. I bet your grandmother laid that one on you,

too.'

'No, my mother,' she said absently. 'And she told me to always flush.

Which is why I go downstairs.'

'It still wakes me up,' Dick mumbled.

'What?'

'Nothing.'

This time he had actually drifted halfway over the threshold of sleep

when she spoke his name again.

'What?' he asked, a little impatiently.

'You don't suppose oh, never mind. Go back to sleep.'

'No, go on, finish. I'm awake again. I don't suppose what?'

'That old man. Mr Denker. You don't think Todd's seeing too much of

him, do you? Maybe he's oh, I don't know filling Todd up with a lot of

stories.'

'The real heavy horrors,' Dick said. 'The day the Essen Motor Works

dropped below quota.' He snickered.

'It was just an idea,' she said, a little stiffly. The covers rustled as she

turned over on her side. 'Sorry I bothered you.'

He put a hand on her bare shoulder. 'I'll tell you something, babe,' he said,

and stopped for a moment, thinking carefully, choosing his words. 'I've been

worried about Todd too, sometimes. Not the same things you've been

worried about, but worried is worried, right?'

She turned back to him. 'About what?'

'Well, I grew up a lot different than he's growing up. My dad had the

store. Vic the Grocer, everyone called him. He had a book where he kept the

names of the people who owed him, and how much they owed. You know

what he called it?'

'No.' Dick rarely talked about his boyhood; she had always thought it was

because he hadn't enjoyed it She listened carefully now.

'He called it the Left Hand Book. He said the right hand was business,

but the right hand should never know what the left hand was doing. He said

if the right hand did know, it would probably grab a meat-cleaver and chop

the left hand right off.'

'You never told me that.'

'Well, I didn't like the old man very much when we first got married, and

the truth is I still spend a lot of time not liking him. I couldn't understand

why I had to wear pants from the Goodwill box while Mrs Mazursky could

get a ham on credit with that same old story about how her husband was

going back to work next week. The only work that fucking wino Bill

Mazursky ever had was holding onto a twelve-cent bottle of musky so it

wouldn't fly away.

'All I ever wanted in those days was to get out of the neighbourhood and

away from my old man's life. So I made grades and played sports I didn't

really like and got a scholarship at UCLA. And I made damn sure I stayed

in the top ten per cent of my classes because the only Left Hand Book the

colleges kept in those days was for the GIs that fought in the war. My dad

sent me money for my textbooks, but the only other money I ever took from

him was the time I wrote home in a panic because I was flunking

funnybook French. I met you. And I found out later from Mr. Henreid down

the block that my dad put a lien on his car to scare up cash. And now I've

got you, and we've got Todd. I've always thought he was a damned fine boy,

and I've tried to make sure he's always had everything he ever needed

anything that would help him grow into a fine man. I used to laugh at that

old wheeze about a man wanting his son to be better than he was, but as I

get older it seems less funny and more true. I never want Todd to have to

wear pants from a Goodwill box because some wino's wife got a ham on

credit. You understand?'

'Yes, of course I do,' she said quietly.

'Then, about ten years ago, just before my old man finally got tired of

fighting off the urban renewal guys and retired, he had a minor stroke. He

was in the hospital for ten days. And the people from the neighbourhood,

the guineas and the krauts, even some of the jigs that started to move in

around 1955 or so-they paid his bill. Every fucking cent.

I couldn't believe it. They kept the store open, too. Fiona Castellano got

four or five of her friends who were out of work to come in on shifts. When

my old man got back, the books balanced out to the cent.'

'Wow,' she said, very softly.

'You know what he said to me? My old man? That he'd always been

afraid of getting old-of being scared and hurting and all by himself. Of

having to go into the hospital and not being able to make ends meet

anymore. Of dying. He said that after the stroke he wasn't scared anymore.

He said he thought he could die well. "You mean

die happy, pop?" I asked him. "No," he said. "I don't think anyone dies

happy, Dickie." He always called me Dickie, still does, and that's another

thing I guess I'll never be able to like. He said he didn't think anyone died

happy, but you could die well. That impressed me.'

He was silent for a long, thoughtful time.

"The last five or six years I've been able to get some perspective on my

old man. Maybe because he's down there in Sandoro and out of my hair. I

started thinking that maybe the Left Hand Book wasn't such a bad idea.

That was when I started to worry about Todd. I kept wanting to tell him

about there was maybe something more to life than me being able to take

all of you to Hawaii for a month or being able to buy Todd pants that don't

smell like the mothballs they used to put in the Goodwill box. I could never

figure out how to tell him those things. But I think maybe he knows. And it

takes a load off my mind.'

'Reading to Mr Denker, you mean?'

'Yes. He's not getting anything for that. Denker can't pay him. Here's this

old guy, thousands of miles from any friends or relatives that might still be

living, here's this guy that's everything my father was afraid of. And there's

Todd.'

'I never thought of it just like that.'

'Have you noticed the way Todd gets when you talk to him about that old

man?'

'He gets very quiet.'

'Sure. He gets tongue-tied and embarrassed, like he was doing something

nasty. Just like my pop used to when someone tried to thank him for laying

some credit on them. We're Todd's right hand, that's all. You and me and all

the rest-the house, the ski-trips to Tahoe, the Thunderbird in the garage, his

colour TV. All his right hand. And he doesn't want us to see what his left

hand is up to.'

'You don't think he's seeing too much of Denker, then?'

'Honey, look at his grades! If they were falling off, I'd be the first one to

say hey, enough is enough, already, don't go overboard. His grades are the

first place trouble would show up. And how have they been?'

'As good as ever, after that first slip.'

'So what are we talking about? Listen, I've got a conference at nine, babe.

If I don't get some sleep, I'm going to be sloppy.'

'Sure, go to sleep,' she said indulgently, and as he turned over, she kissed

him lightly on one shoulderblade. 'I love you.'

'Love you too,' he said comfortably, and closed his eyes. 'Everything's

fine, Monica. You worry too much.'

'I know I do. Goodnight.'

They slept.

'Stop looking out the window,' Dussander said. 'There is nothing out there

to interest you.'

Todd looked at him sullenly. His history text was open on the table,

showing a colour plate of Teddy Roosevelt cresting San Juan Hill. Helpless

Cubans were falling away from the hooves of Teddy's horses. Teddy was

grinning a wide American grin, the grin of a man who knew that God was

in His heaven and everything was bully. Todd Bowden was not grinning.

'You like being a slave-driver, don't you?' he asked.

'I like being a free man,' Dussander said. 'Study.'

'Suck my cock.'

'As a boy,' Dussander said, 'I would have had my mouth washed out with

lye soap for saying such a thing.'

Times change.'

'Do they?' Dussander sipped his bourbon. 'Study.'

Todd stared at Dussander. 'You're nothing but a goddamned rummy. You

know that?'

'Study.'

'Shut up!' Todd slammed his book shut It made a riflecrack sound in

Dussander's kitchen.

'I can never catch up, anyway. Not in time for the test There's fifty pages

of this shit left, all the way up to World War I. I'll make a crib in Study Hall

2 tomorrow.'

Harshly, Dussander said: 'You will do no such thing!'

'Why not? Who's going to stop me? You?'

'Boy, you are still having a hard time comprehending the stakes we play

for. Do you think I enjoy keeping your snivelling brat nose in your books?'

His voice rose, whipsawing, demanding, commanding. 'Do you think I

enjoy listening to your tantrums, your kindergarten swears? "Suck my

cock",' Dussander mimicked savagely in a high, falsetto voice that made

Todd flush darkly. '"Suck my cock, so what, who cares, I'll do it tomorrow,

suck my cock"!'

'Well, you like it!' Todd shouted back. 'Yeah, you like it! The only time

you don't feel like a zombie is when you're on my back! So give me a

fucking break!'

'If you are caught with one of these cribbing papers, what do you think

will happen? Who will be told first?'

Todd looked at his hands with their ragged, bitten fingernails and said

nothing.

'Who?'

'Jesus, you know. Rubber Ed. Then my folks, I guess.'

Dussander nodded. 'Me, I guess that too. Study. Put your cribbing paper

in your head, where it belongs.'

'I hate you,' Todd said dully. 'I really do.' But he opened his book again

and Teddy Roosevelt grinned up at him, Teddy galloping into the twentieth

century with his sabre in his hand, Cubans falling back in disarray before

him -possibly before the force of his fierce American grin.

Dussander began to rock again. He held his teacup of bourbon in his

hands. "That's a good boy,' he said, almost tenderly.

Todd had his first wet-dream on the last night of April, and awoke to the

sound of rain whispering secretly through the leaves and branches of the

tree outside his window.

In the dream, he had been in one of the Patin laboratories. He was

standing at the end of a long, low table. A lush young girl of amazing

beauty had been secured to this table with clamps. Dussander was assisting

him. Dussander wore a white butcher's apron and nothing else. When he

pivoted to turn on the monitoring equipment, Todd could see Dussander's

scrawny buttocks grinding at each other like misshapen white stones.

He handed something to Todd, something he recognized immediately,

although he had never actually seen one. It was a dildo. The tip of it was

polished metal, winking in the light of the overhead fluorescents like

heartless chrome. The dildo was hollow. Snaking out of it was a black

electrical cord that ended in a red rubber bulb.

'Go ahead,' Dussander said. 'The Fuehrer says it's all right. He says it's

your reward for studying.'

Todd looked down at himself and saw that he was naked. His small penis

was fully erect, jutting plumply up at an angle from the thin peachdown of

his pubic hair. He slipped the dildo on. The fit was tight but there was some

sort of lubricant in there. The friction was pleasant. No; it was more than

pleasant. It was delightful.

He looked down at the girl and felt a strange shift in his thoughts as if

they had slipped into a perfect groove. Suddenly all things seemed right.

Doors had been opened. He would go through them. He took the red bulb in

his left hand, put his knees on the table, and paused for just a moment,

gauging the angle while his Norseman's prick made his own angle up and

out from his slight boy's body.

Dimly, far off, he could hear Dussander reciting: Test run eighty-four.

Electricity, sexual stimulus, metabolism. Based on the Thyssen theories of

negative reinforcement. Subject is a young Jewish girl, approximately

sixteen years of age, no scars, no identifying marks, no known disabilities -'

She cried out when the tip of the dildo touched her. Todd found the cry

pleasant, as he did her fruitless struggles to free herself, or, lacking that, to

at least bring her legs together.

This is what they can't show in those magazines about the war, he

thought, but it's there, just the same.

He thrust forward suddenly, parting her with no grace. She shrieked like

a firebell.

After her initial thrashing and efforts to expel him, she lay perfectly still,

enduring. The lubricated interior of the dildo pulled and slid against Todd's

engorgement. Delightful. Heavenly. His fingers toyed with the rubber bulb

in his left hand. Far away, Dussander recited pulse, blood pressure,

respiration, alpha waves, beta waves, stroke count.

As the climax began to build inside him, Todd became perfectly still and

squeezed the bulb. Her eyes, which had been closed, flew open, bulging.

Her tongue fluttered in the pink cavity of her mouth. Her arms and legs

thrummed. But the real action was in her torso, rising and falling, vibrating,

every muscle (oh every muscle every muscle moves tightens closes every)

every muscle and the sensation at climax was (ecstasy) oh it was, it was (the

end of the world thundering outside).

He woke to that sound and the sound of rain. He was huddled on his side

in a dark ball, his heart beating at a sprinter's pace. His lower belly was

covered with a warm, sticky liquid. There was an instant of panicky horror

when he feared he might be bleeding to death and then he realized what it

really was, and he felt a fainting, nauseated revulsion. Semen. Come. Jizz.

Jungle-juice. Words from fences and locker rooms and the walls of gas

station bathrooms. There was nothing here he wanted. His hands balled

helplessly into fists. His dream-climax recurred to him, pallid now,

senseless, frightening. But nerve-endings still tingled, retreating slowly

from their spike-point That final scene, fading now, was disgusting and yet

somehow compulsive, like an unsuspecting bite into a piece of tropical fruit

which, you realized (a second too late), had only tasted so amazingly sweet

because it was rotten. It came to him then. What he would have to do. There

was only one way he could get himself back again. He would have to kill

Dussander. It was the only way. Games were done; storytime was over. This

was survival.

'Kill him and it's all over,' he whispered in the darkness, with the rain in

the tree outside and semen drying on his belly. Whispering it made it seem

real.

Dussander always kept three or four fifths of Ancient Age on a shelf over

the steep cellar stairs. He would go to the door, open it (half-crocked

already, more often than not), and go down two steps. Then he would lean

out, put one hand on the shelf, and grip the fresh bottle by the neck with his

other hand. The cellar floor was not paved, but the din was hard-packed and

Dussander, with a machinelike efficiency that Todd now thought of as

Prussian rather than German, oiled it once every two months to keep bugs

from breeding in the dirt Cement or no cement, old bones break easily. And

old men have accidents. The post-mortem would show that 'Mr. Denker'

had had a skinful of booze when he 'fell'. What happened, Todd?

He didn't answer the door so I used the key he made for me. Sometimes

he falls asleep. I went into the kitchen and saw the cellar door was open. I

went down the stairs and he he

Then, of course, tears. It would work.

He would have himself back again. For a long time Todd lay awake in

the dark, listening to the thunder retreat westward, out over the Pacific,

listening to the secret sound of the rain. He thought he would stay awake

the rest of the night, going over it and over it But he fell asleep only

moments later and slept dreamlessly with one fist carted under his chin. He

woke on the first of May fully rested for the first time in months.

May, 1975.

For Todd, that Friday in the middle of the month was the longest of his

life. He sat in class after class, hearing nothing, waiting only for the last five

minutes, when the instructor a would take out his or her small pile of Flunk

Cards and distribute them. Each time an instructor approached Todd's desk

with that pile of cards, he grew cold. Each time he or she passed him

without stopping, he felt waves of dizziness and a semi-hysteria.

Algebra was the worst. Storrman approached hesitated and just as

Todd became convinced he was going to pass on, he laid a Flunk Card face-

down on Todd's desk. Todd looked at it coldly, with no feelings at all. Now

that it had happened, he was only cold. Well, that's it, he thought. Point,

game, set, and match. Unless Dussander can think of something else. And I

have my doubts.

Without much interest, he turned the Flunk Card over to see by how

much he had missed his C. It must have been close, but trust old Stony

Storrman not to give anyone a- He saw that the grade-spaces were utterly

blank -the letter-grade space and the numerical-grade space. Written in the

COMMENTS section was this message: I'm sure glad I don't have to give

you one of these for real! Chas. Storrman.

The dizziness came again, more savagely this time, roaring through his

head, making it feel like a balloon filled with helium. He gripped the sides

of his desk as hard as he could, holding one thought with total obsessive

tightness: You will not faint, not faint, not faint. Little by little the waves of

dizziness passed, and then he had to control an urge to run up the aisle after

Storrman, turn him around, and poke his eyes out with the freshly

sharpened pencil he held in his hand. And through it all his face remained

carefully blank. The only sign that anything at all was going inside was a

mild tic in one eyelid. School let out for the week fifteen minutes later.

Todd walked slowly around the building to the bike-racks, his head down,

his hands shoved into his pockets, his books tucked into the crook of his

right arm, oblivious of the running,

shouting students. He tossed the books into his bike-basket, unlocked the

Schwinn, and pedalled away. Towards Dussander's house.

Today, he thought Today is your day, old man.

'And so,' Dussander said, pouring bourbon -into his cup as Todd entered

the kitchen, 'the accused returns from the dock. How said they, prisoner?'

He was wearing his bathrobe and a pair of hairy wool socks that climbed

halfway up his shins. Socks like that, Todd thought, would be easy to slip

in. He glanced at the bottle of Ancient Age Dussander was currently

working. It was down to the last three fingers.

'No Ds, no Fs, no Flunk Cards,' Todd said. 'I'll still have to change some

of my grades in June, but maybe just the averages. I'll be getting all As and

Bs this quarter if I keep up my work.'

'Oh, you'll keep it up, all right,' Dussander said. 'We will see to it.' He

drank and then tipped more bourbon into his cup. This calls for a

celebration.' His speech was slightly blurred-hardly enough to be

noticeable, but Todd knew the old fuck was as drunk as he ever got. Yes,

today. It would have to be today.

But he was cool.

'Celebrate pigshit,' he told Dussander.

'I'm afraid the delivery boy hasn't arrived with the beluga and the truffles

yet,' Dussander said, ignoring him. 'Help is so unreliable these days. What

about a few Ritz crackers and some Velveeta while we wait?'

'Okay,' Todd said. 'What the hell.'

Dussander stood up (one knee banged the table, making him wince) and

crossed to the refrigerator. He got out the cheese, took a knife from the

drawer and a plate from the cupboard, and a box of Ritz crackers from the

breadbox.

'All carefully injected with prussic acid,' he told Todd as he set the cheese

and crackers down on the table. He grinned, and Todd saw that he had left

out his false teeth again today. Nevertheless, Todd smiled back.

'So quiet today!' Dussander exclaimed. 'I would have expected you to

turn handsprings all the way up the hall.' He emptied the last of the bourbon

into his cup, sipped, smacked his lips.

'I guess I'm still numb,' Todd said. He bit into a cracker. He had stopped

refusing Dussander's food a long time ago. Dussander thought there was a

letter with one of Todd's friends-there was not, of course; he had friends,

but none he trusted that much.

He supposed Dussander had guessed that long ago, but he knew

Dussander didn't quite dare put his guess to such an extreme test as murder.

'What shall we talk about today?' Dussander enquired, tossing off the last

shot. 'I give you the day off from studying, how's that? Uh? Uh?' When he

drank, his accent became thicker. It was an accent Todd had come to hate.

Now he felt okay about the accent; he felt okay about everything. He felt

very cool all over. He looked at his hands, the hands which would give the

push, and they looked just as they always did. They were not trembling;

they were cool.

'I don't care,' he said. 'Anything you want.'

'Shall I tell you about the special soap we made? Our experiments with

enforced homosexuality? Or perhaps you would like to hear how I escaped

Berlin after I had been foolish enough to go back. That was a close one, I

can tell you.' He pantomimed shaving one stubbly cheek and. laughed.

'Anything,' Todd said. 'Really.' He watched Dussander examine the empty

bottle and then get up with it in one hand. Dussander took it to the

wastebasket and dropped it in.

'No, none of those, I think,' Dussander said. 'You don't seem to be in the

mood.' He stood reflectively by the wastebasket for a moment and then

crossed the kitchen to the cellar door. His wool socks whispered on the hilly

linoleum. 'I think today I will instead tell you the story of an old man who

was afraid.'

Dussander opened the cellar door. His back was now to the table. Todd

stood up quietly.

'He was afraid,' Dussander went on, 'of a certain young boy who was, in a

queer way, his friend. A smart boy. His mother called this boy "apt pupil",

and the old man had already discovered he was an apt pupil although

perhaps not in the way his mother thought'

Dussander fumbled with the old-fashioned electrical switch on the wall,

trying to turn it with his bunched and clumsy fingers. Todd walked-almost

glided-across the linoleum, not stepping in any of the places where it

squeaked or creaked. He knew this kitchen as well as his own, now. Maybe

better.

'At first, the boy was not the old man's friend,' Dussander said. He

managed to turn the switch at last. He descended the first step with a

veteran drunk's care. 'At first the old man disliked the boy a great deal.

Then he grew to to enjoy his company, although there was still a strong

element of dislike there.' He was looking at the shelf now but still holding

the railing. Todd, cool-no, now he was cold-stepped behind him and

calculated the chances of one strong push dislodging Dussander's hold on

the railing. He decided to wait until Dussander leaned forward.

'Part of the old man's enjoyment came from a feeling of equality,'

Dussander went on thoughtfully. 'You see, the boy and the old man had each

other in mutual deathgrips.

Each knew something the other wanted kept secret. And then ah, then it

became apparent to the old man that things were changing. Yes. He was

losing his hold-some of it or all of it, depending on how desperate the boy

might be, and how clever. It occurred to this old man on one long and

sleepless night that it might be well for him to acquire a new hold on the

boy. For his own safety.'

Now Dussander let go of the railing and leaned out over the steep cellar

stairs, but Todd remained perfectly still. The bone-deep cold was melting

out of him, being replaced by a rosy flush of anger and confusion. As

Dussander grasped his fresh bottle, Todd thought viciously that the old man

had the stinkiest cellar in town, oil or no oil. It smelled as if something had

died down there.

'So the old man got out of his bed right then. What is sleep to an old

man? Very little.

And he sat at his small desk, thinking about how cleverly he had

enmeshed the boy in the very crimes the boy was holding over his own

head. He sat thinking about how hard the boy had worked, how very hard,

to bring his school marks back up. And how, when they were back up, he

would have no further need for the old man alive. And if the old man were

dead, the boy could be free.'

He turned around now, holding the fresh bottle of Ancient Age by the

neck.

'I heard you, you know,' he said, almost gently. 'From the moment you

pushed your chair back and stood up. You are not as quiet as you imagine,

boy. At least not yet.'

Todd said nothing.

'So!' Dussander exclaimed, stepping back into the kitchen and closing the

cellar door firmly behind him. "The old man wrote everything down, nicht

wahr! From first word to last he wrote it down. When he was finally

finished it was almost dawn and his hand was singing from the arthritis-the

verdammt arthritis-but he felt

good for the first time in weeks. He felt safe, He got back into his bed

and slept until mid-afternoon. In fact, if he had slept any longer, he would

have missed his favorite-General Hospital.'

He had regained his rocker now. He sat down, produced a worn jackknife

with a yellow ivory handle, and began to cut painstakingly around the seal

covering the top of the bourbon bottle.

'On the following day the old man dressed in his best suit and went down

to the bank where he kept his little checking and savings accounts. He

spoke to one of the bank officers, who was able to answer all the old man's

questions most satisfactorily. He rented a safety deposit box. The bank

officer explained to the old man that he would have a key and the bank

would have a key. To open the box, both keys would be needed. No one but

the old man could use the old man's key without a signed, notarized letter of

permission from the old man himself. With one exception.'

Dussander smiled toothlessly into Todd Bowden's white, set face.

'That exception is made in event of the box-holder's death,' he said. Still

looking at Todd, still smiling, Dussander put his jackknife back into the

pocket of his robe, unscrewed the cap of the bourbon bottle, and poured a

fresh jolt into his cup.

'What happens then?' Todd asked hoarsely.

'Then the box is opened in the presence of a bank official and a

representative of the Internal Revenue Service. The contents of the box are

inventoried.

In this case they will find only a twelve-page document. Non-taxable

but highly interesting.'

The fingers of Todd's hands crept towards each other and locked tightly.

'You can't do that,' he said in a stunned and unbelieving voice. It was the

voice of a person who observes another person walking on the ceiling. 'You

can't can't do that.'

'My boy,' Dussander said kindly, 'I have.'

'But I you' His voice suddenly rose to an agonized howl. 'You're old!

Don't you know that you're old? You could die! You could die anytime!'

Dussander got up. He went to one of the kitchen cabinets and took down

a small glass.

This glass had once held jelly. Cartoon characters danced around the rim.

Todd recognized them all-Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty

Rubble, Pebbles and Bam-Bam. He had grown up with them. He watched

as Dussander wiped this jelly-glass almost ceremonially with a dishtowel.

He watched as Dussander set it in front of him. He watched as Dussander

poured a finger of bourbon into it.

'What's that for?' Todd muttered. 'I don't drink. Drinking's for cheap

stewbums like you.'

'Lift your glass, boy. It is a special occasion. Today you drink.'

Todd looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the glass.

Dussander clicked his cheap ceramic cup smartly against it.

'I make a toast, boy-long life! Long life to both of us! Prosit!' He tossed

his bourbon off at a gulp and then began to He rocked back and forth,

stockinged feet hitting the floor and Todd thought he had never looked more

like a vulture, a vulture in a bathrobe, a noisome beast of carrion.

'I hate you,' he whispered, and then Dussander began to choke on his own

laughter. His face turned a dull brick colour; it sounded as if he were

coughing, laughing, and strangling, all at the same time. Todd, scared, got

up quickly and clapped him on the back until the coughing fit had passed.

'Danke schon,' he said. 'Drink your drink. It will do you good.'

Todd drank it. It tasted like very bad cold-medicine and lit a fire in his

gut.

'I can't believe you drink this shit all day,' he said, putting the glass back

on the table and shuddering. 'You ought to quit it. Quit drinking and

smoking.'

'Your concern for my health is touching,' Dussander said. He produced a

crumpled pack of cigarettes from the same bathrobe pocket into which the

jackknife had disappeared.

'And I am equally solicitous of your own welfare, boy. Almost every day

I read in the paper where a cyclist has been killed at a busy intersection.

You should give it up. You should walk. Or ride the bus, like me.'

'Why don't you go fuck yourself?' Todd burst out.

'My boy," Dussander said, pouring more bourbon and beginning to laugh

again, 'we are fucking each other-didn't you know that?'

One day about a week later, Todd was sitting on a disused mail platform

down in the old trainyard. He chucked cinders out across the rusty, weed-

infested tracks one at a time.

Why shouldn't I kill him anyway?

Because he was a logical boy, the logical answer came first. No reason at

all. Sooner or later Dussander was going to die, and given Dussander's

habits, it would probably be sooner. Whether he killed the old man or

whether Dussander died of a heart attack in his bathtub, it was all going to

come out. At least he could have the pleasure of wringing the old vulture's

neck.

Sooner or later-that phrase defied logic.

Maybe it'll be later, Todd thought. Cigarettes or not, booze or not, he's a

tough old bastard. He's lasted this long, so so maybe it'll be later. From

beneath him came a fuzzy snort.

Todd jumped to his feet, dropping the handful of cinders he had been

holding. That snorting sound came again.

He paused, on the verge of running, but the snort didn't recur. Nine

hundred yards away, an eight-lane freeway swept across the horizon above

this weed- and junk-strewn cul-de-sac with its deserted buildings, rusty

cyclone fences, and splintery, warped platforms. The cars up on the freeway

glistened in the sun like exotic hard-shelled beetles. Eight lanes of traffic up

there, nothing down here but Todd, a few birds and whatever had snorted.

Cautiously, he bent down with his hands on his knees and peered under the

mail platform. There was a wino lying up in there among the yellow weeds

and empty cans and dusty old bottles. It was impossible to tell his age; Todd

put him at somewhere between thirty and four hundred. He was wearing a

strappy tee-shirt that was caked with dried vomit, green pants that were far

too big for him, and grey leather workshoes cracked in a hundred places.

The cracks gaped like agonized mouths. Todd thought he smelled like

Dussander's cellar.

The wino's red-laced eyes opened slowly and stared at Todd with a bleary

lack of wonder. As they did, Todd thought of the Swiss Army knife in his

pocket, the Angler model. He had purchased it at a sporting goods store in

Redondo Beach almost a year ago. He could hear the clerk that had waited

on him in his mind: You couldn't pick a better knife than that one, son- a

knife like that could save your life someday. We sell fifteen hundred Swiss

knives every damn year. Fifteen hundred a year.

He put his hand in his pocket and gripped the knife. In his mind's eye he

saw Dussander's jackknife working slowly around the neck of the bourbon

bottle, slitting the seal. A moment later he became aware that he had an

erection. Cold terror stole into him.

The wino swiped a hand over his cracked lips and then ticked them with

a tongue which nicotine had turned a permanent dismal yellow. 'Got a dime,

kid?' Todd looked at him expressionlessly.

'Gotta get to LA. Need another dime for the bus. I got a pointment, me.

Got a job offertunity. Nice kid like you must have a dime. Maybe you got a

quarter.' Yessir, you could clean out a damn bluegill with a knife tike that

hell, you could clean out a damn marlin with it if you had to. We sell fifteen

hundred of those a year. Every sporting goods store and Army-Navy

Surplus in America sells them, and (if you decided to use this one to clean

out some dirty, shitty old wino, nobody could trace it back to you,

absolutely NOBODY.)

The wino's voice dropped; it became a confidential, tenebrous whisper.

'For a buck I'd do you a blowjob, you never had a better. You'd come your

brains out, kid, you'd -'

Todd pulled his hand out of his pocket. He wasn't sure what was in it

until he opened it. Two quarters. Two nickels a dime. Some pennies. He

threw them at the wino and fled.

June, 1975.

Todd Bowden, now fourteen, came biking up Dussander's walk and

parked his bike on the kickstand. The LA Times was on the bottom step; he

picked it up. He looked at the bell, below which the neat legends ARTHUR

DENKER and NO SOLICITORS, NO PEDDLERS, NO SALESMEN still

kept their places. He didn't bother with the bell now, of course; he had his

key.

Somewhere close by was the popping, burping sound of a Lawn Boy. He

looked at Dussander's grass and saw it could use a cutting; he would have to

tell the old man to find a boy with a mower. Dussander forgot little things

like that more often now. Maybe it was senility; maybe it was just the

pickling influence of Ancient Age on his brains. That was an adult thought

for a boy of fourteen to have, but such thoughts no longer struck Todd as

singular. He had many adult thoughts these days. Most of them were not so

great.

He let himself in.

He had his usual instant of cold terror as he entered the kitchen and saw

Dussander slumped slightly sideways in his rocker, the cup on the table, a

half-empty bottle of bourbon beside it. A cigarette had burned its entire

length down to lacy grey ash in a mayonnaise cover where several other

butts had been mashed out. Dussander's mouth hung open. His face was

yellow. His big hands dangled limply over the rocker's arms. He didn't seem

to be breathing.

'Dussander,' he said, a little too harshly. 'Rise and shine, Dussander.' He

felt a wave of relief as the old man twitched, blinked, and finally sat up. 'Is

it you? And so early?'

They let us out early on the last day of school,' Todd said. He pointed to

the remains of the cigarette in the mayonnaise cover. 'Someday you'll burn

down the house doing that.'

'Maybe,' Dussander said indifferently. He fumbled out his cigarettes, shot

one from the pack (it almost rolled off the edge of the table before

Dussander was able to catch it), and at last got it going. A protracted fit of

coughing followed, and Todd winced in disgust. When the old man really

got going, Todd half-expected him to start spitting out greyish-black chunks

of lung-tissue onto the table and he'd probably grin as he did it. At last the

coughing eased enough for Dussander to say, 'What have you got there?'

'Report-card.'

Dussander took it, opened it, and held it away from him at arm's length

so he could read it. 'English A. American History A. Earth Science B

Plus. Your Community and You A. Primary French B Minus. Beginning

Algebra B.' He put it down. 'Very good. What is the slang? We have saved

your bacon, boy. Will you have to change any of these averages in the last

column?'

'French and Algebra, but no more than eight or nine points in all. I don't

think any of this is ever going to come out. And I guess I owe that to you.

I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth. So, thanks.'

'What a touching speech,' Dussander said, and began to cough again.

'I guess I won't be seeing you around too much from now on,' Todd said,

and Dussander abruptly stopped coughing.

'No?' he said, politely enough.

'No,' Todd said. 'We're going to Hawaii for a month starting on 25 June.

In September I'll be going to school across town. It's this bussing thing.'

'Oh yes, the Schwarzen,' Dussander said, idly watching a by as it trundled

across the red and white check of the tablecloth. 'For twenty years this

country has worried and whined about the Schwarzen. But we know the

solution don't we, boy?' He smiled toothlessly at Todd and Todd looked

down, feeling the old sickening lift and drop of his stomach.

Terror, hate, and a desire to do something so awful: could only be fully

contemplated in his dreams.

'Look, I plan to go to college, in case you didn't know,' Todd said. 'I know

that's a long time off, but I think about it. I even know what I want to major

in. History.'

'Admirable. He who will not learn from the past is -'

'Oh, shut up,' Todd said.

Dussander did so, amiably enough. He knew the boy wasn't done not

yet. He sat with his hands folded, watching him.

'I could get my letter back from my friend,' Todd suddenly blurted. 'You

know that? I could let you read it, and then you could watch me burn it. If-'

'- if I would remove a certain document from my safety deposit box.'

'Well yeah.'

Dussander uttered a long, windy, rueful sigh. 'My boy,' he said. 'Still you

do not understand the situation. You never have, right from the beginning.

Partly because you are only a boy, but not entirely even then, even in the

beginning, you were a very old boy. No, the real villain was and is your

absurd American self-confidence that never allowed you to consider the

possible consequences of what you were doing which does not allow it

even now.'

Todd began to speak and Dussander raised his hands adamantly, suddenly

the world's oldest traffic cop.

'No, don't contradict me. It's true. Go on if you like. Leave the house, get

out of here, never come back. Can I stop you? No. Of course I can't. Enjoy

yourself in Hawaii while I sit in this hot, grease-smelling kitchen and wait

to see if the Schwarzen in Watts will decide to start killing policemen and

burning their shitty tenements again this year. I can't stop you anymore than

I can stop getting older a day at a time.'

He looked at Todd fixedly, so fixedly that Todd looked away.

'Down deep inside, I don't like you. Nothing could make me like you.

You forced yourself on me. You are an unbidden guest in my house. You

have made me open crypts perhaps better left shut, because I have

discovered that some of the corpses were buried alive, and that a few of

those still have some wind left in them.

'You yourself have become enmeshed, but do I pity you because of that?

Gott im Himmel! You have made your bed; should I pity you if you sleep

badly in it? No I don't pity you, and I don't like you, but I have come to

respect you a little bit. So don't try my patience by asking me to explain this

twice. We could obtain our documents and destroy them here in my kitchen.

And still it would not be over. We would, in fact, be no better off than we

are at this minute.'

'I don't understand you.'

'No, because you have never studied the consequences of what you have

set in

motion.

But attend me, boy. If we burned our letters here, in this jar cover, how

would I know you hadn't made a copy? Or two? Or three? Down at the

library they have a Xerox machine, for a nickel anyone can make a

photocopy. For a dollar, you could post a copy of my death-warrant on

every streetcorner for twenty blocks. Four miles of death-warrants, boy!

Think of it! Can you tell me how I would know you hadn't done such a

thing?'

'I well, I I' Todd realized he was floundering and forced himself to

shut his mouth.

Dussander had just outlined a piece of duplicity so fundamental that it

had simply never crossed his mind. He opened his mouth to say so, realized

Dussander would not believe him and that, in fact, was the problem.

He shut his mouth again, this time with a snap.

'And how would you know I hadn't made two copies for my safety

deposit box that I had burned one and left the other there?'

Todd was silent and dismayed.

'Even if there were some impartial third party we could go to, always

there would be doubts. The problem is insoluble, boy. Believe it.'

'Shit,' Todd said in a very small voice.

Dussander took a deep drink from his cup and looked at Todd over the

rim.

'Now I tell you two more things, boy. First, that if your part in this matter

came out, your punishment would be quite small. It is even possible-no,

more than that, likely-that it would never come out in the papers at all. I

frightened you with reform school once, when I was badly afraid you might

crack and tell everything. But do I believe that? No -I used it the way a

father will use the "boogeyman" to frighten a child into coming home

before dark. I don't believe that they would send you there, not in this

country where they spank killers on the wrist and send them out into the

streets to kill again after two years of watching colour TV in a penitentiary.

'But it might well ruin your life all the same. There are records and

people

talk.

Always, they talk. Such a juicy scandal is not allowed to wither; it is

bottled, like wine.

And, of course, as the years pass, your culpability will grow with you.

Your silence will grow more damning. If the truth came out today, people

would say, "But he is just a child!" not knowing, as I do, what an old child

you are. But what would they say, boy, if the truth about me, coupled with

the fact that you knew about me as early as 1974 but kept silent, came out

while you are in high school? That would be

bad. For it to come out while you are in college would be disaster. As a

young man just starting out in business armageddon. You understand this

first thing?'

Todd was silent, but Dussander seemed satisfied. He nodded.

Still nodding, he said: 'Second, I don't believe you have a letter.'

Todd strove to keep a poker face, but he was terribly afraid his eyes had

widened in shock. Dussander was studying him avidly, and Todd was

suddenly, nakedly aware that this old man had interrogated hundreds,

perhaps thousands of people. He was an expert.

Todd felt that his skull had turned to window-glass and all things were

flashing inside in large letters.

'I asked myself who you would trust so much. Who are your friends

who do you run with? Who does this boy, this self-sufficient, coldly

controlled little boy, go to with his loyalty? The answer is, nobody.'

Dussander's eyes gleamed yellowly.

'Many times I have studied you and calculated the odds. I know you, and

I know much of your character-no, not all, because one human being can

never know everything that is in another human being's heart-but I know so

little about what you do and who you see outside of this house. So I think,

"Dussander, there is a chance that you are wrong. After all these years, do

you want to be captured and maybe killed because you misjudged a boy?"

Maybe when I was younger, I would have taken the chance-the odds are

good odds, and the chance is a small chance. It is very strange to me, you

know-the older one becomes, the less one has to lose in matters of life and

death and yet, one becomes more and more conservative.' He looked hard

into Todd's face.

'I have one more thing to say, and then you can go when you want. What

I have to say is that, while I doubt the existence of your letter, never doubt

the existence of mine. The document I have described to you exists. If I die

today tomorrow everything will come out, Everything,'

'Then there's nothing for me,' Todd said. He uttered a dazed little laugh.

'Don't you see that?'

'But there is. Years will go by. As they pass, your hold on me will

become worth less and less, because no matter how important my life and

liberty remain to me, the Americans and-yes, even the Israelis-will have

less and less interest in taking them away.'

'Yeah? Then why don't they let that guy Speer go?'

'If the Americans had him-the Americans who let killers out with a spank

on the wrists -they would have let him go,' Dussander said. 'Are the

Americans going to allow the Israelis to extradite a ninety-year-old man so

they can hang him as they hung Eichmann? I think not. Not in a country

where they put photographs of firemen rescuing kittens from trees on the

front pages of city newspapers.

'No, your hold over me will weaken even as mine over you grows

stronger. No situation is static. And there will come a time-if I live long

enough-when I will decide what you know no longer matters. Then I will

destroy the document.'

'But so many things could happen to you in between! Accidents,

sickness, disease -' Dussander shrugged.' "There will be water if God wills

it, and we will find it if God wills it, and we will drink it if God wills it"

What happens is not up to us.' Todd looked at the old man for a long time-

for a very long time. There were flaws in Dussander's arguments-there had

to be. A way out, an escape hatch either for both of them or for Todd alone.

A way to cry it off times, guys, I hurt my foot, allee-allee-in-free. A black

knowledge of the years ahead trembled somewhere behind his eyes;

he could feel it there, waiting to be born as conscious thought.

Everywhere he went, everything he did

He thought of a cartoon character with an anvil suspended over its head.

By the time he graduated from high school, Dussander would be eighty, and

that would not be the end; by the time he collected his BA, Dussander

would be eighty-four and he would still feel that he wasn't old enough; he

would finish his master's thesis and graduate school the year Dussander

turned eighty-six and Dussander still might not feel safe. 'No,' Todd said

thickly. 'What you're saying I can't face that.'

'My boy,' Dussander said gently, and Todd heard for the first time and

with dawning horror the slight accent the old man had put on the first word.

'My boy you must' Todd stared at him his tongue swelling and thickening

in his mouth until it seemed it must fill his throat and choke him. Then he

wheeled and blundered out of the house. Dussander watched all of this with

no expression at all, and when the door had slammed shut and the boy's

running footsteps stopped, meaning that he had mounted his bike, he lit a

cigarette. There was, of course, no safe deposit box, no document But the

boy believed those things existed; he had believed utterly. He was safe. It

was ended.

But it was not ended.

That night they both dreamed of murder, and both of them awoke in

mingled terror and exhilaration.

Todd awoke with the now familiar stickiness on his lower belly.

Dussander, too old for such things, put on the Gestapo uniform and then lay

down again, waiting for his racing heart to slow. The uniform was cheaply

made and already beginning to fray.

In Dussander's dream he had finally reached the camp at the top of the

hill. The wide gate slid open for him and then rumbled shut on its steel

track once he was inside. Both the gate and the fence surrounding the camp

were electrified. His scrawny, naked pursuers threw themselves against the

fence -. wave after wave; Dussander had laughed at them and he had

strutted back and forth, his chest thrown out, his cap cocked at exactly the

right angle. The high, winey smell of burning flesh filled the black air, and

he had awakened in southern California thinking of jack-o'-lanterns and the

night when vampires seek the blue flame.

Two days before the Bowdens were scheduled to fly to Hawaii, Todd

went back to the abandoned trainyard where folks had once boarded trains

for San Francisco, Seattle, and Las Vegas; where other, older folks had once

boarded the trolley for Los Angeles.

It was nearly dusk when he got there. On the curve of freeway nine

hundred yards away, most of the cars were now mowing their parking

lights. Although it was warm, Todd was wearing a light jacket. Tucked into

his belt under it was a butcher-knife wrapped in an old hand-towel. He had

purchased the knife in a discount department store, one of the big ones

surrounded by acres of parking lot.

He looked under the platform where the wino had been the month before.

His mind turned and turned, but it turned on re-thing; everything inside him

at that moment was shades of black on black.

What he found was the same wino or possibly another; they all looked

pretty much the same.

"Hey!' Todd said. 'Hey! You want some money?'

The wino turned over, blinking. He saw Todd's wide, sunny grin and

began to grin back.

A moment later the butcher knife descended, all whicker-snicker and

chrome-white, slicker-slicing through his stubbly right cheek. Blood

sprayed. Todd could see the blade in the wino's opening mouth and then

its tip caught for a moment in the left corner of the wino's lips, pulling his

mouth into an insanely cockeyed grin. Then it was the knife that was

making the grin; he was carving the wino like a Halloween pumpkin.

He stabbed the wino thirty-seven times. He kept count. Thirty-seven,

counting the first strike, which went through the wino's cheek and then

turned his tentative smile into a great grisly grin. The wino stopped trying

to scream after the fourth stroke. He stopped trying to scramble away from

Todd after the sixth. Todd then crawled all the way under the platform and

finished the job.

On his way home he threw the knife into the river. His pants were

bloodstained. He tossed them into the washing machine and set it to wash

cold. There were still faint stains on the pants when they came out, but they

didn't concern Todd. They would fade in time.

He found the next day that he could barely lift his right arm to the level

of his shoulder.

He told his father he must have strained it throwing pepper with some of

the guys in the park.

'It'll get better in Hawaii,' Dick Bowden said, ruffling Todd's hair, and it

did; by the time they came home, it was as good as new.

It was July again.

Dussander, carefully dressed in one of his three suits (not his best), was

standing at the bus stop and waiting for the last local of the day to take him

home. It was 10.45 p. m. He had been to a film, a light and frothy comedy

that he had enjoyed a great deal. He had been in a fine mood ever since the

morning mail. There had been a postcard from the boy, a glossy colour

photo of Waikiki Beach with bone-white highrise hotels standing in the

background. There was a brief message on the reverse.

Dear Mr Denker,

Boy this sure is some place. I've been swimming every day. My dad

caught a big fish and my mom is catching up on her reading (joke).

Tomorrow we're going to a volcano. I'll try not to fall in! Hope you're okay.

Stay healthy, Todd

He was still smiling faintly at the significance of that last when a hand

touched his elbow.

'Mister?'

'Yes?'

He turned, on his guard-even in Santa Donato, muggers were not

unknown-and then winced at the aroma. It seemed to be a combination of

beer, halitosis, dried sweat, and possibly Musterole. It was a bum in baggy

pants. He-it -wore a flannel shirt and very old Keds that were currently

being held together with dirty bands of adhesive tape. The face looming

above this motley costume looked like the death of God.

'You got an extra dime, mister? I gotta get to LA, me. Got a job

offertunity. I need just a dime more for the express bus. I wudn't ask if it

wasn't a big chance for me.'

Dussander had begun to frown, but now his smile reasserted itself.

'Is it really a bus ride you wish?'

The wino smiled sickly, not understanding.

'Suppose you ride the bus home with me,' Dussander proposed. 'I can

offer you a drink, a meal, a bath, and a bed.. All I ask in return is a little

conversation. I am an old man. I live alone. Company is sometimes very

welcome.'

The drunk's smile abruptly grew more healthy as the situation clarified

itself. Here was a well-to-do old faggot with a taste for slumming.

'All by yourself! Bitch, innit?'

Dussander answered the broad, insinuating grin with a polite smile. 'I

only ask that you sit away from me on the bus. You smell rather strongly.'

'Maybe you don't want me stinking up your place, then,' the drunk said

with sudden, tipsy dignity.

'Come, the bus will be here in a minute. Get off one stop after I do and

then walk back two blocks. I'll wait for you on the corner. In the morning I

will see what I can spare.

Perhaps two dollars.'

'Maybe even five,' the drunk said brightly. His dignity, tipsy or otherwise,

had been forgotten.

'Perhaps, perhaps,' Dussander said impatiently. He could now hear the

low diesel drone of the approaching bus. He pressed a quarter, the correct

bus fare, into the bum's grimy hand and strolled a few paces away without

looking back.

The bum stood undecided as the headlights of the local swept over the

rise. He was still standing and frowning down at the quarter when the old

faggot got on the bus without looking back. The bum began to walk away

and then-at the last second-he reversed direction and boarded the bus just

before the doors folded closed. He put the quarter into the fare-box with the

expression of a man putting a hundred dollars down on a long shot. He

passed Dussander without doing more than glancing at him and sat at the

back of the bus. He dozed off a little, and when he woke up, the rich old

faggot was gone. He got off at the next stop, not knowing if it was the right

one or not, and not really caring. He walked back two blocks and saw a dim

shape under the streetlight. It was the old faggot, all right. The faggot was

watching him approach, and he was standing as if at attention.

For just a moment the bum felt a chill of apprehension, an urge to just

turn away and forget the whole thing.

Then the old man was gripping him by the arm and his grip was

surprisingly firm. 'Good,' the old man said. 'I'm very glad you came. My

house is down here. It's not far.'

'Maybe even ten,' the bum said, allowing himself to be led. 'Maybe even

ten,' the old faggot agreed, and then laughed. 'Who knows?' The Bi-

Centennial year arrived.

Todd came by to see Dussander half a dozen times between his return

from Hawaii in the summer of 1975 and the trip he and his parents took to

Rome just as all the drum-thumping, flag-waving, and Tall Ships-watching

was approaching its climax. Todd got special permission to leave school

early, on 1 June, and they were back three days before the Bi-Centennial

4th.

These visits to Dussander were low-key and in no way unpleasant; the

two of them found they could pass the time civilly enough. They spoke

more in silences than they did in words, and their actual conversations

would have put an FBI agent to sleep. Todd told the old man that he had

been seeing a girl named Angela Farrow off and on. He wasn't nuts about

her, but she was the daughter of one of his mother's friends. The old man

told Todd he had taken up braiding rugs because he had read such an

activity was good for arthritis. He showed Todd several samples of his

work, and Todd dutifully admired them. The boy had grown quite a bit, had

he not? (Well, two inches.) Had Dussander given up smoking? (No, but he

had been forced to cut down; they made him cough too much NOW.) How

had his schoolwork been? (Challenging but exciting; he had made all As

and Bs, had gone to the state finals with his Science Fair project on solar

power, and was now thinking of majoring in anthropology instead of history

when he got to college.) Who was mowing Dussander's lawn this year?

(Randy Chambers from just down the street-a good boy, but rather fat and

slow.)

During that year Dussander had put an end to three winos in his kitchen.

He had been approached at the downtown bus stop some twenty times, had

made the drink-dinner-bath-and-bed offer seven times. He had been turned

down twice, and on two other occasions the winos had simply walked off

with the quarters Dussander gave them for the fare-box. After some

thought, he had worked out a way around this; he simply bought a bus-pass.

They were two dollars and fifty cents, good for fifteen rides, and non-

negotiable at the local liquor stores.

On very warm days just lately, Dussander had noticed an unpleasant

smell drifting up from his cellar. He kept his doors and windows firmly shut

on these days. Todd Bowden had found a wino sleeping it off in an

abandoned drainage culvert behind a vacant lot on Cienaga Way-this had

been in December, during the Christmas vacation. He had stood there for

some time, hands stuffed into his pockets, looking at the wino and

trembling. He had returned to the lot six times over a period of five weeks,

always wearing his light jacket, zipped halfway up to conceal the Craftsman

hammer tucked into his belt. At last he had come upon the wino again-that

one or some other, and who really gave a fuck-on the first day of March. He

had begun with the hammer end of the tool, and then at some point (he

didn't really remember when; everything had been swimming in a red haze)

he had switched to the claw end, obliterating the wino's face. For Kurt

Dussander, the winos were a half-cynical propitiation of gods he had finally

recognized or re-recognized. And the winos were fun. They made him feel

alive. He was beginning to feel that the years he had spent in Santa Donato-

the years before the boy had turned up on his doorstep with his big blue

eyes and his wide American grin -had been years spent being old before his

time. He had been only sixty-eight when he came here. And he felt much

younger than that now.

The idea of propitiating gods would have startled Todd at first but it

might have gained eventual acceptance. After stabbing the wino under the

train platform, he had expected his nightmares to intensify to perhaps even

drive him crazy. He had expected waves of paralyzing guilt that might well

end with a blurted confession or the taking of his own life.

Instead of any of those things, he had gone to Hawaii with his parents

and enjoyed the best vacation of his life.

He had begun high school last September feeling oddly new and

refreshed, as if a different person had jumped into his Todd Bowden skin.

Things that had made no particular impression on him since earliest

childhood-the sunlight just after dawn, the look of the ocean off the Fish

Pier, the sight of people hurrying on a downtown street at just that moment

of dusk when the streetlights come on-these things now imprinted

themselves on his mind again in a series of bright cameos, in images so

clear they seemed electroplated. He tasted life on his tongue like a draught

of wine straight from the bottle. After he had seen the stewbum in the

culvert, the nightmares had begun again. The most common one involved

the wino he had stabbed to death in the abandoned trainyards. Home from

school, he burst into the house, a cheery Hi, Monica-baby! on his lips. It

died there as he saw the dead wino in the raised breakfast nook. He was

sitting slumped over their butcher-block table in his puke-smelling shirt and

pants. Blood had streaked across the bright tiled floor; it was drying on the

stainless steel counters. There were bloody handprints on the natural pine

cupboards.

Clipped to the note-board by the fridge was a message from his mother:

Todd-Gone to the store. Back by 3.30. The hands of the stylish sunburst

clock over the Jenn-Aire range stood at 3.20 and the drunk was sprawled

dead up there in the nook like some horrid oozing relic from the subcellar

of a junkshop and there was blood everywhere, and Todd began trying to

clean it up, wiping every exposed surface, all the time screaming at the dead

wino that he had to go, had to leave him alone, and the wino just lolled

there and stayed dead, grinning up at the ceiling, and the freshets of blood

kept pouring from the stab-wounds in his dirty skin. Todd grabbed the O-

Cedar mop from the closet and began to slide it madly back and forth across

the floor, aware that he was not really getting the blood up but only diluting

it, spreading it around, but unable to stop. And just as he heard his mother's

Town and Country wagon turn into the driveway, he realized the wino was

Dussander. He woke from these dreams sweating and gasping, clutching

double handfuls of the bedclothes.

But after he finally found the wino in the culvert again -that wino or

some other-and used the hammer on him, these dreams went away. He

supposed he might have to kill again, and maybe more than once. It was too

bad, but of course their time of usefulness as human creatures was over.

Except their usefulness to Todd, of course. And Todd, like everyone else he

knew, was only tailoring his lifestyle to fit his own particular needs as he

grew older. Really, he was no different than anybody. You had to make your

own way in the world; if you were going to get along, you had to do it by

yourself.

In the fall of his junior year, Todd played varsity tailback for the Santa

Donate Cougars and was named All-Conference. And in the second quarter

of that year, the quarter which ended in late January of 1977, he won the

American Legion Patriotic Essay Contest This contest was open to all city

high school students who were taking American history courses. Todd's

piece was called 'An American's Responsibility'. During the baseball season

in that confused year (the Shah of Iran had been ousted and gasoline prices

were on the rise again) he was the school's star pitcher, winning four and

losing none. His batting average was.361. At the awards assembly in June

he was named Athlete of the Year and given a plaque by Coach Haines

(Coach Haines, who had once taken him aside and told him to keep

practising his curve

'because none of these niggers can throw a curve-ball, Bowden, not one

of them'). Monica Bowden burst into tears when Todd called her from

school and told her he was going to get the award. Dick Bowden strutted

around his office for two weeks following the ceremony, trying not to boast.

That summer they rented a cabin in Big Sur and stayed there for two weeks

and Todd snorkled his brains out. During that same year Todd killed four

derelicts. He stabbed two of them and bludgeoned two of them. He had

taken to wearing two pairs of pants on what he now acknowledged to be

hunting expeditions. Sometimes he rode the city buses, looking for likely

spots. The best two, he found, were the Santo Donato Mission for the

Indigent on Douglas Street, and around the corner from the Salvation Army

on Euclid. He would walk slowly through both of these neighbourhoods,

waiting to be panhandled. When a wino approached him, Todd would tell

him that he, Todd, wanted a bottle of whiskey, and if the wino would buy it,

Todd would share the bottle. He knew a place, he said, where they could go.

It was a different place every time, of course. He resisted a strong urge to go

back either to the trainyards or to the culvert behind the vacant lot on

Cienaga Way. Revisiting the scene of a previous crime would have been

unwise. During the same year Dussander smoked sparingly, drank Ancient

Age bourbon, and watched TV. Todd came by once in a while, but their

conversations became increasingly arid. They were growing apart

Dussander celebrated his seventy-eighth birthday that year, which was also

the year Todd turned sixteen. Dussander remarked that sixteen was the best

year of a young man's life, forty-one the best year of a middle-aged man's,

and seventy-eight the best of an old man's. Todd nodded politely. Dussander

had been quite drunk and cackled in a way that made Todd distinctly

uneasy.

Dussander had dispatched two winos during Todd's academic years of

197677. The second had been livelier than he looked; even after Dussander

had gotten the man soddenly drunk he had tottered around the kitchen with

the haft of a steak-knife jutting from the base of his neck, gushing blood

down the front of his shirt and onto the floor. The wino had re-discovered

the front hall after two staggering circuits of the kitchen and had almost

escaped the house.

Dussander had stood in the kitchen, eyes wide with shocked unbelief,

watching the wino grunt and puff his way towards the door, rebounding

from one side of the hall to the other and knocking cheap Currier & Ives

reproductions to the floor. His paralysis had not broken until the wino was

actually groping for the doorknob. Then Dussander had bolted across the

room, jerked open the utility drawer, and pulled out his meat-fork. He ran

down the hall with the meat-fork held out in front of him and drove it into

the wine's back.

Dussander had stood over him, panting, his old heart racing in a

frightening way racing like that of a heart-attack victim on that Saturday

night TV programme he enjoyed, Emergency. But at last it had slowed back

into a normal rhythm and he knew he was going to be all right.

There had been a great deal of blood to clean up.

That had been four months ago, and since then he had not made his offer

at the downtown bus-stop. He was frightened of the way he had almost

bungled the last one but when he remembered the way he had handled

things at the last moment, pride rose in his heart. In the end the wino had

never made it out the door, and that was the important thing.

In the fall of 1977, during the first quarter of his senior year, Todd joined

the rifle club. By June of 1978 he had qualified as a marksman. He made

All-Conference in football again, won five and lost one during the baseball

season (the loss coming as the result of two errors and one unearned run),

and made the third highest Merit Scholarship score in the school's history.

He applied at Berkeley and was promptly accepted. By April he knew he

would either be valedictorian or salutatorian on graduation night. He very

badly wanted to be valedictorian.

During the latter half of his senior year, an odd impulse came on him-one

which was as frightening to Todd as it was irrational. He seemed to be

clearly and firmly in control of it, and that at least was comforting, but that

such a thought should have occurred at all was scary. He had made an

arrangement with life. He had worked things out. His life was much like his

mother's bright and sunshiny kitchen, where all the surfaces were dressed in

chrome, Formica, or stainless steel- a place where everything worked when

you pressed the buttons. There were deep and dark cupboards in this

kitchen, of course, but many things could be stored in them and their doors

still be closed. This new impulse reminded him of the dream in which he

had come home to discover the dead and bleeding wino in his mother's

clean, well-lighted place. It was as if, in the bright and careful arrangement

he had made, in that a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place

kitchen of his mind, a dark and bloody intruder now lurched and shambled,

looking for a place to die conspicuously

A quarter of a mile from the Bowden house was the freeway, running

eight lanes wide. A steep and brushy bank led down to it. There was plenty

of good cover on the bank. His father had given him a Winchester.30-.30

for Christmas, and it had a removable telescopic sight. During rush hour,

when all eight lanes were jammed, he could pick a spot on that bank and

why, he could easily

Do what?

Commit suicide

Destroy everything he had worked for these last five years?

Say what!

No sir, no ma'am, no way.

It is, as they say, to laugh.

Sure it was but the impulse remained.

One Saturday a few weeks before his high school graduation, Todd cased

the.30-.30 after carefully emptying the magazine. He put the rifle in the

back seat of his father's new toy-a used Porsche. He drove to the spot where

the brushy dope dropped steeply down to the freeway. His mother and

father had taken the station wagon and had driven to LA for the weekend.

Dick, now a full partner, would be holding discussions with the Hyatt

people about a new Reno hotel.

Todd's heart bumped in his chest and his mouth was full of sour, electric

spit as he worked his way down the grade with the cased rifle in his arms.

He came to a fallen tree and sat cross-legged behind it. He uncased the rifle

and laid it on the dead tree's smooth trunk. A branch jutting off at an angle

made a nice rest for the barrel. He snugged the buttplate into the hollow of

his right shoulder and peered into the telescopic sight.

Stupid! his mind screamed at him. Boy, this is really stupid! If someone

sees you, it's not going to matter if the gun's loaded or not! You'll get in

plenty of trouble, maybe even end up with some Chippie shooting at you!

It was midmorning and the Saturday traffic was light. He settled the

crosshairs on a woman behind the wheel of a blue Toyota. The woman's

window was half open and the round collar of her sleeveless blouse was

fluttering. Todd centred the crosshairs on her temple and dry-fired. It was

bad for the firing-pin, but what the fuck.

'Pow,' he whispered as the Toyota disappeared beneath the underpass half

a mile up from the slope where Todd sat. He swallowed around a lump that

tasted like a stuck-together mass of pennies.

Here came a man behind the wheel of a Subaru Brat pickup truck. This

man had a scuzzy-looking grey beard and was wearing a San Diego Padres

baseball hat.

'You're you're the dirty rat the dirty rat that shot my brudduh,' Todd

whispered, giggling a little, and dry-fired the.30.30 again.

He shot at five others, the impotent snap of the hammer spoiling the

illusion at the end of each 'kill'. Then he cased the rifle again. He carried it

back up the slope, bending low to keep from being seen. He put it into the

back of the Porsche. There was a dry hot pounding in his temples. He drove

home. Went up to his room. Masturbated.

The stewbum was wearing a ragged, unravelling reindeer sweater that

looked so startling it almost seemed surreal here-southern California. He

also wore seaman's issue bluejeans which were out at the knees, showing

white, hairy flesh and a number of peeling scabs. He raised the jelly glass-

Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty dancing around the rim in what might

have been some grotesque fertility rite-and tossed off the knock of Ancient

Age at a gulp. He smacked his lips for the last time in this world.

'Mister, that hits the old spot. I don't mind saying so.'

'I always enjoy a drink in the evening,' Dussander agreed from behind

him, and then rammed the butcher knife into the stewbum's neck. There was

the sound of ripping gristle, a sound like a drumstick being torn

enthusiastically from a freshly roasted chicken. The jelly glass fell from the

stewbum's hand and onto the table. It rolled towards the edge, its movement

enhancing the illusion that the cartoon characters on it were dancing.

The stewbum threw his head back and tried to scream. Nothing came out

but a hideous whistling sound. His eyes widened, widened and then his

head thumped soggily onto the red and white oilcloth check that covered

Dussander's kitchen table. The stewbum's upper plate slithered halfway out

of his mouth like a semi-detachable grin. Dussander yanked the knife free-

he had to use both hands to do it-and crossed to the kitchen sink. It was

filled with hot water, Lemon Fresh Joy, the dirty supper dishes. The knife

disappeared into a billow of citrus-smelling suds like a very small fighter

plane diving into a cloud.

He crossed to the table again and paused there, resting one hand on the

dead stewbum's shoulder while a spasm of coughing rattled through him.

He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and spat yellowish-brown

phlegm into it. He had been smoking too much lately. He always did when

he was making up his mind to do another one. But this one had gone

smoothly; really very smoothly. He had been afraid after the mess he had

made with the last one that he might be tempting fate sorely to try it again.

Now, if he hurried, he would still be able to watch the second half of

Lawrence Welk. He bustled across the kitchen, opened the cellar door, and

turned on the light switch. He went back to the sink and got the package of

green plastic garbage bags from the cupboard beneath. He shook one out as

he walked back to the slumped wino. Blood had run across the table cloth in

all directions. It had puddled in the wino's lap and on the hilly, faded

linoleum. It would be on the chair, too, but all of those things would clean

up. Dussander grabbed the stewbum by the hair and yanked his head up. It

came with boneless ease, and a moment later the wino was lolling

backwards, like a man about to get a pre-haircut shampoo. Dussander

pulled the garbage bag down over the wino's head, over his shoulders, and

down his arms to the elbows. That was as far as it would go. He unbuckled

his late guest's belt and pulled it free of the fraying belt-loops. He wrapped

the belt around the garbage bag two or three inches above the elbows and

buckled it tight. Plastic rustled. Dussander began to hum 'Lift Marlene'

under his breath. The wino's feet were clad in scuffed and dirty Hush

Puppies. They made a limp V on the floor as Dussander seized the belt and

dragged the corpse towards the cellar door. Something white tumbled out of

the plastic bag and clicked on the floor. It was the stewbum's upper plate,

Dussander saw. He picked it up and stuffed it into one of the wino's front

pockets.

He laid the wino down in the cellar doorway with his head now lolling

backwards onto the second stair-level. Dussander climbed around the body

and gave it three healthy kicks. The body moved slightly on the first two,

and the third sent it slithering bonelessly down the stairs. Halfway down the

feet flew up over the head and the body executed an acrobatic roll. It belly-

whopped onto the packed dirt of the cellar floor with a solid thud.

One Hush Puppy flew off, and Dussander made a mental note to pick it

up.

He went down the stairs, skirted the body, and approached his toolbench.

To the left of the bench a spade, a rake, and a hoe leaned against the wall in

a neat rank. Dussander selected the spade. A little exercise was good for an

old man. A little exercise could make you feel young.

The smell down here was not good, but it didn't bother him much. He

limed the place once a month (once every three days after he had 'done' one

of his winos) and he had gotten a fan which he ran upstairs to keep the

smell from permeating the house on very warm still days. Josef Kramer, he

remembered, had been fond of saying that the dead speak, but we hear them

with our noses.

Dussander picked a spot in the cellar's north corner and went to work.

The dimensions of the grave were two and half feet by six feet. He had

gotten to a depth of two feet, half deep enough, when the first paralyzing

pain struck him in the chest like a shotgun blast He straightened up, eyes

flaring wide. Then the pain rolled down his arm unbelievable pain, as if an

invisible hand had seized all the blood-vessels in there and was now pulling

them. He watched the spade tumble sideways and felt his knees buckle. For

one horrible moment he felt sure that he was going to fall into the grave

himself.

Somehow he staggered backwards three paces and sat down on his

workbench with a plop. There was an expression of stupid surprise on his

face-he could feel it-and he thought he must look like one of those silent

movie comedians after he's been hit by the swinging door or stepped in the

cow patty. He put his head down between his knees and gasped.

Fifteen minutes crawled by. The pain had begun to abate somewhat, but

he did not believe he would be able to stand. For the first time he

understood all the truths of old age which he had been spared until now. He

was terrified almost to the point of whimpering.

Death had brushed by him in this dank smelly cellar; it had touched

Dussander with the hem of its robe. It might be back for him yet But he

would not die down here; not if he could help it.

He got up, hands still crossed on his chest, as if to hold the fragile

machinery together. He staggered across the open space between the

workbench and the stairs. His left foot tripped over the dead wino's

outstretched leg and he went to his knees with a small cry.

There was a sullen flare of pain in his chest. He looked up the stairs-the

steep, steep stairs. Twelve of them. The square of light at the top was

mockingly distant.

"Ein,' Kurt Dussander said, and pulled himself grimly up onto the first

stair-

level.

'Zwei. Drei. Vier.'

It took him twenty minutes to reach the linoleum floor of the kitchen.

Twice, on the stairs, the pain had threatened to come back, and both times

Dussander had waited with his eyes closed to see what would happen,

perfectly aware that if it came back as strongly as it had come upon him

down there, he would probably die. Both times the pain had faded away

again.

He crawled across the kitchen floor to the table, avoiding the pools and

streaks of blood, which were now congealing. He got the bottle of Ancient

Age, took a swallow, and closed his eyes. Something that had been cinched

tight in his chest seemed to loosen a little. The pain faded a bit more. After

another five minutes he began to work his way slowly down the hall. His

telephone sat on a small table halfway down.

It was quarter past nine when the phone rang in the Bowden house. Todd

was sitting cross-legged on the couch, going over his notes for the trig final.

Trig was a bitch for him, as all maths were and probably always would be.

His father was seated across the room, going through the chequebook stubs

with a portable calculator on his lap and a mildly disbelieving expression on

his face. Monica, closest to the phone, was watching the James Bond movie

Todd had taped off HBO two evenings before.

'Hello?' She listened. A faint frown touched her face and she held the

handset out to Todd. 'It's Mr Denker. He sounds excited about something.

Or upset.'

Todd's heart leaped into his throat, but his expression hardly changed.

'Really?' He went to the phone and took it from her. 'Hi, Mr Denker.'

Dussander's voice was hoarse and short 'Come over right away, boy. I've

had a heart attack. Quite a bad one, I think.'

'Gee,' Todd said, trying to collect his flying thoughts, to see around the

fear that now bulked huge in his own mind. That's interesting, all right, but

it's pretty late and I was studying-'

'I understand that you cannot talk,' Dussander said in that harsh, almost

barking voice. 'But you can listen. I cannot call an ambulance or dial 222,

boy at least not yet. There is a mess here. I need help and that means you

need help.'

'Well if you put it that way' Todd's heartbeat had -reached a hundred

and twenty beats a minute, but his face was calm, almost serene. Hadn't he

known all along that a night like this would come? Yes, of course he had.

Tell your parents I've had a letter,' Dussander said. 'An important letter.

You understand?'

'Yeah, okay,' Todd said.

'Now we see, boy. We see what you are made of.'

'Sure,' Todd said. He suddenly became aware that his -mother was

watching him instead of the movie, and he forced a stiff grin onto his face.

'Bye.'

Dussander was saying something else now, but Todd hung up on it 'I'm

going over to Mr Denker's for a while,' he said, speaking to both of them

but looking at his mother-that faint expression of concern was still on her

face. 'Can I pick up anything for either of you at the store?'

'Pipe cleaners for me and a small package of fiscal -responsibility for

your mother,' Dick said.

'Very funny,' Monica said. Todd, is Mr Denker -'

'What in the name of God did you get at Fielding's?' Dick interrupted.

That knick-knack shelf in the closet. I told you that. There's nothing

wrong with Mr Denker, is there, Todd? He sounded a little strange.'

'There really are such things as knick-knack shelves? I thought those

crazy women who write British mysteries made them up so there would

always be a place where the killer could find a blunt instrument'

'Dick, can I get a word in edgeways?'

'Sure. Be my guest But for the closet?'

'He's okay, I guess,' Todd said. He put on his leather jacket and zipped it

up. 'But he was excited. He got a letter from a nephew of his in Hamburg or

Dusseldorf or someplace. He hasn't heard from any of his people in years,

and now he's got this letter and his eyes aren't good enough for him to read

it'

'Well isn't that a bitch,' Dick said. 'Go on, Todd. Get over there and ease

the man's mind.'

'I thought he had someone to read to him,' Monica said. 'A new boy.'

'He does,' Todd said, suddenly hating his mother, hating the half-formed

intuition he saw swimming in her eyes. 'Maybe he wasn't home, or maybe

he couldn't come over this late.'

'Oh. Well go on, then. But be careful.'

'I will. You don't need anything at the store?'

'No. How's your studying for that calculus final going?'

'It's trig,' Todd said. 'Okay, I guess. I was just getting ready to call it a

night.' This was a rather large lie.

'You want to take the Porsche?' Dick asked.

'No, I'll ride my bike.' He wanted the extra five minutes to collect his

thoughts and get his emotions under control-to try, at least. And in his

present state, he would probably drive the Porsche into a telephone pole.

'Strap your reflector-patch on your knee,' Monica said, 'and tell Mr

Denker hello for us.'

'Okay.'

That doubt was still in his mother's eyes but it was less evident now. He

blew her a kiss and then went out to the garage where his bike- a racing-

style German bike rather than a Schwinn now-was parked. His heart was

still racing in his chest, and he felt a mad urge to take the.30-.30 back into

the house and shoot both of his parents and then go down to the slope

overlooking the freeway. No more Apt Pupil 241 worrying about

Dussander. No more bad dreams, no more winos. He would shoot and shoot

and shoot, only saving one bullet back for the end.

Then reason came back to him and he rode away towards Dussander's,

his reflector-patch revolving up and down just above his knee, his long

blond hair streaming back from his brow.

'Holy Christ!' Todd nearly screamed.

He was standing in the kitchen door. Dussander was damped on his

elbows, his china cup between them. Large drops of sweat stood out on his

forehead. But it

was not Dossander Todd was looking at It was the blood. There seemed

to be blood everywhere-it was puddled on the table, an the empty kitchen

chair, on the floor.

'Where are you bleeding?' Todd shouted, at last getting his frozen feet to

move again-it seemed to him that he had been standing in the doorway for

at least a thousand years. This is the end, he was thinking, this is the

absolute end of everything. The balloon is going up high, baby, all the way

to the sky, baby, and it's toot-toot-tootsie, goodbye. All the same, he was

careful not to step in any of the blood. 'I thought you said you had a fucking

heart attack!'

'It's not my blood,' Dussander muttered. 'What?' Todd stopped. 'What did

you

say?'

'Go downstairs. You will see what has to be done.'

'What the hell is this?' Todd asked. A sudden terrible idea -had come into

his head. 'Don't waste our time, boy. I think you will not be too surprised at

what you find downstairs. I think you have had experience in such matters

as the one in my cellar. Firsthand experience.'

Todd looked at him, unbelieving, for another moment, and then he

plunged down the cellar stairs two by two. His first look in the feeble

yellow glow of the basement's only light made him think that Dussander

had pushed a bag of garbage down there. Then he saw the protruding legs,

and the dirty hands held down at the sides by the cinched belt.

'Holy Christ,' he repeated, but this time the words had no force at all-they

emerged in a slight, skeletal whisper.

He pressed the back of his right hand against lips that were as dry as

sandpaper. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them

again, he felt in control of himself at last.

Todd started moving.

He saw the spade-handle protruding from a shallow hole in the far corner

and understood at once what Dussander had being doing when his ticker

had seized up. A moment later he became fully aware of the cellar's fetid

aroma-a smell like rotting tomatoes. He had smelled it before, but upstairs it

was much fainter and, of course, he hadn't been here very often over the

last couple of years. Now he understood exactly what that smell meant and

for several moments he had to struggle with his gorge. A series of choked

gagging sounds, muffled by the hand he had clapped over his mouth and

nose, came from him.

Little by little he got control of himself again.

He seized the wino's legs and dragged him across to the edge of the hole.

He dropped them, skidded sweat from his forehead with the heel of his left

hand, and stood absolutely still for a moment, thinking harder than he ever

had in his life.

Then he seized the spade and began to deepen the hole. When it was five

feet deep, he got out and shoved the derelict's body in with his foot Todd

stood at the edge of the grave, looking down. Tattered bluejeans. Filthy,

scab-encrusted hands. It was a stewbum, all right The irony was almost

funny. So funny a person could scream with laughter.

He ran back upstairs.

'How are you?' he asked Dussander.

'Ill be all right Have you taken care of it?'

'I'm doing it, okay?'

'Be quick. There's still up here.'

'I'd like to find some pigs and feed you to them,' Todd said, and went

back down the cellar before Dussander could reply.

He had almost completely covered the wino when he began to think there

was something wrong. He stared into the grave, grasping the spade's handle

with one hand. The wino's legs stuck partway out of the mound of dirt, as

did the tips of his feet-one old shoe, possibly a Hush Puppy, and one filthy

athletic sock that might actually have been white around the time that Taft

was President.

One Hush Puppy? One?

Todd half-ran back around the furnace to the foot of the stairs. He

glanced around wildly.

A headache was beginning to thud against his temples, dull drillbits

trying to work their way out. He spotted the old shoe five feet away,

overturned in the shadow of some abandoned shelving. Todd grabbed it, ran

back to the grave with it, and threw it in. Then he started to shovel again.

He covered the shoe, the legs, everything.

When all the dirt was back in the hole, he slammed the spade down

repeatedly to tamp it Then he grabbed the rake and ran it back and forth,

trying to disguise the fact the earth here had been recently turned. Not much

use; without good camouflage, a hole that has been recently dug and then

filled in always looks like a hole that has been recently dug and then filled

in. Still, no one would have any occasion to come down here, would they?

He and Dussander would damn well have to hope not.

Todd ran back upstairs. He was starting to pant.

Dussander's elbows had spread wide and his head had sagged down to

the table. His eyes were closed, the lids a shiny purple-the colour of asters

'Dussander!' Todd shouted. There was a hot, juicy taste in his mouth-the

taste of fear mixed with adrenalin and pulsing hot blood. 'Don't you dare die

on me, you old fuck!'

'Keep your voice down,' Dussander said without opening ins eyes. 'You'll

have everyone on the block over here.'

'Where's your cleaner? Lestoil Top Job something like that. And rags.

I need rags.'

'All that is under the sink.'

A lot of the blood had now dried on. Dussander raised his head and

watched as Todd crawled across the floor, scrubbing first at the puddle on

the linoleum and then at the drips that had straggled down the legs of the

chair the wino had been sitting in. The boy was biting compulsively at his

lips, champing at them, almost, like a horse at a bit. At last the job was

finished. The astringent smell of cleaner filled the room.

'There is a box of old rags under the stairs,' Dussander said. 'Put those

bloody ones on the bottom. Don't forget to wash your hands.'

'I don't need your advice. You got me into this.'

'Did I? I must say you took hold well.' For a moment the old mockery

was in Dussander's voice, and then a bitter grimace pulled his face into a

new shape. 'Hurry.'

Todd took care of the rags, then hurried up the cellar stairs for the last

time. He looked nervously down the stairs for a moment, then snapped off

the light and closed the door.

He went to the sink, rolled up his sleeves, and washed in the hottest water

he could stand.

He plunged his hands into the suds and came up holding the butcher

knife Dussander had used.

'I'd like to cut your throat with this,' Todd said grimly.

'Yes, and then feed me to the pigs. I have no doubt of it'

Todd rinsed the knife, dried it, and put it away. He did the rest of the

dishes quickly, let the water out, and rinsed the sink. He looked at the clock

as he dried his hands and saw it was twenty past ten.

He went to the phone in the hallway, picked up the receiver, and looked

at it thoughtfully.

The idea that he had forgotten something-something as potentially

damning as the wino's shoe-nagged unpleasantly at his mind. What? He

didn't know. If not for the headache, he might be able to get it The triple-

damned headache. It wasn't like him to forget things, and it was scary.

He dialled 222 and after a single ring, a voice answered: This is Santa

Donato MED-Q.

Do you have a medical problem?'

'My name is Todd Bowden. I'm at 963 Claremont Lane. I need an

ambulance.'

'What's the problem, son?'

'It's my friend, Mr D-' He bit down on his lip so hard that it squirted

blood, and for a moment he was lost, drowning in the pulses of pain from

his head. Dussander. He had almost given this anonymous MED-Q voice

Dussander's real name.

"Calm down, son,' the voice said. Take it slow and you'll be fine.'

'My friend Mr Denker,' Todd said. 'I think he's had a heart attack.'

'His symptoms?'

Todd began to give them, but the receptionist had heard enough as soon

as Todd described the chest pain that had migrated to the left arm. He told

Todd the ambulance would arrive in ten to twenty minutes, depending on

the traffic. Todd hung up and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

'Did you get it?' Dussander called weakly.

'Yes!' Todd screamed. 'Yes, I got it! Yes goddammit yes! Yes yes yes!

Just shut up?'

He pressed his hands even harder against his eyes, creating first senseless

starflashes of light and then a bright field of red. Get hold of yourself, Todd-

baby. Get down, get funky, get cool. Dig it.

He opened his eyes and picked up the telephone again. Now the hard

part. Now it was time to call home.

'Hello?' Monica's soft, cultured voice in his ear. For a moment-just a

moment-he saw himself slamming the muzzle of the.30-.30 into her nose

and pulling the trigger into the first flow of blood.

'It's Todd, mommy. Let me talk to dad, quick.'

He didn't call her mommy anymore. He knew she would get that signal

quicker than anything else, and she did. 'What's the matter? Is something

wrong, Todd?'

'Just let me talk to him!'

'But what -'

The phone rattled and clinked. He heard his mother saying something to

his father. Todd got ready.

Todd? What's the problem?'

'It's Mr Denker, daddy. He it's a heart attack, I think. I'm pretty sure it

is.'

'Jesus!' His father's voice lagged away for a moment and Todd heard him

repeating the information to his wife. Then he was back. 'He's still alive? As

far as you can tell?'

'He's alive. Conscious.'

'All right, thank God for that Call an ambulance.'

'I just did.'

'222?'

'Yes.'

'Good boy. How bad is he, can you tell?'

(not fucking bad enough!)

'I don't know, dad. They said the ambulance would be here soon, but I'm

sorta scared.

Can you come over and wait with me?'

'You bet Give me four minutes.'

Todd could hear his mother saying something else as his father hung up,

breaking the connection. Todd replaced the receiver on his end.

Four minutes.

Four minutes to do anything that had been left undone. Four minutes to

remember whatever it was that had been forgotten. Or had he forgotten

anything? Maybe it was just nerves. God, he wished he hadn't had to call

his father. But it was the natural thing to do, wasn't it? Sure. Was there some

natural thing that he hadn 't done? Something -?

'Oh, you shit-for-brains!' he suddenly moaned, and bolted back into the

kitchen.

Dussander's head lay on the table, his eyes half-open, sluggish.

'Dussander!' Todd cried. He shook Dussander roughly, and the old man

groaned. 'Wake up! Wake up, you stinking old bastard!'

'What? Is it the ambulance?'

The letter! My father is coming over, he'll be here in no time. Where's the

fucking letter?"

'What what letter?'

'You told me to tell them you got an important letter. I said' His heart

sank. 'I said it came from overseas from Germany. Christ!' Todd ran his

hands through his hair.

'A letter.' Dussander raised his head with slow difficulty. His seamed

cheeks were an unhealthy yellowish-white, his lips blue. 'From Willi, I

think. Willi Frankel. Dear dear Willi.'

Todd looked at his watch and saw that already two minutes had passed

since he had hung up the phone. His father would not, could not make it

from their house to Dussander's in four minutes, but he could do it damn

fast in the Porsche. Fast, that was it. Everything was moving too fast. And

there was still something wrong here; he felt it. But there was no time to

stop and hunt around for the loophole.

'Yes, okay, I was reading it to you, and you got excited and had this heart

attack. Good.

Where is it?'

Dussander looked at him blankly.

'The letter! Where is it?'

'What letter?' Dussander asked vacantly, and Todd's lands itched to

throttle the drunken old monster.

The one I was reading to you! The one from Willi What's-his-face!

Where is

it?'

They both looked at the table, as if expecting to see the letter materialize

there.

'Upstairs,' Dussander said finally. 'Look in my dresser. The third drawer.

There is a small wooden box in the bottom of that drawer. You will have to

break it open. I lost the key a long time ago. There are some very old letters

from a friend of

mine. None signed. None dated. All in German. A page or- o will serve

for window-fittings, as you would say. If you hurry -'

'Are you crazy?' Todd raged. 'I don't understand German! How could I

read you a letter written in German, you numb fuck?'

'Why would Willi write me in English?' Dussander countered wearily. 'If

you read me the letter in German, I would understand it even if you did not.

Of course your pronunciation would be butchery, but still, I could -'

Dussander was right-right again, and Todd didn't wait to hear more. Even

after a heart attack the old man was a step ahead. Todd raced down the hall

to the stairs, pausing just long enough by the front door to make sure his

father's Porsche wasn't pulling up even now. It wasn't, but Todd's watch told

him just how tight things were getting; it had been five minutes now.

He took the stairs two at a time and burst into Dussander's bedroom. He

had never been up here before, hadn't even been curious, and for a moment

he only looked wildly around at the unfamiliar territory. Then he saw the

dresser, a cheap item done in the style his father called Discount Store

Modern. He fell on his knees in front of it and yanked at the third drawer. It

came halfway out, then jigged sideways in its slot and stuck firmly.

'Goddam you,' he whispered at it. His face was dead pale except for the

spots of dark, bloody colour flaring in each cheek and his blue eyes, which

looked as dark as Atlantic storm-clouds. 'Goddam you fucking thing come

out!'

He yanked so hard that the entire dresser tottered forward and almost fell

on him before deciding to settle back. The drawer shot all the way out and

landed in Todd's lap. Dussander's socks and underwear and handkerchiefs

spilled out all around him. He pawed through the stuff that was still in the

drawer and came up with a wooden box about nine inches long and three

inches deep. He tried to pull up the lid. Nothing happened. It was locked,

just as Dussander had said. Nothing was free tonight. He stuffed the spilled

clothes back into the drawer and then rammed the drawer back into its

oblong slot. It stuck again. Todd worked to free it, wiggling it back and

forth, sweat running freely down his face. At last he was able to slam it shut

He got up with the box. How much time had passed now?

Dussander's bed was the type with posts at the foot and Todd brought the

lock side of the box down on one of these posts as hard as he could,

grinning at the shock of pain that vibrated in his hands and travelled all the

way up to his elbows. He looked at the lock. The lock looked a bit dented,

but it was intact. He brought it down on the post again, even harder this

time, heedless of the pain. This time a chunk of wood flew off the bedpost,

but the lock still didn't give. Todd uttered a little shriek of laughter and took

the box to the other end of the bed. He raised it high over his head this time

and brought it down with all his strength. This time the lock splintered. As

he flipped the lid up, headlights splashed across Dussander's window. He

pawed wildly through the box. Postcards. A locket. A Apt Pupil 249 much-

folded picture of a woman wearing frilly black garters and nothing else. An

old billfold. Several sets of ID. An empty leather passport folder. At the

bottom, letters.

The lights grew brighter, and now he heard the distinctive neat of the

Porsche's engine. It grew louder and then cut off.

Todd grabbed three sheets of airmail-type stationery, closely written in

German on both sides of each sheet, and -an out of the room again. He had

almost gotten to the stairs when he realized he had left the forced box lying

on Dussander's bed. He ran back, grabbed it, and opened the third dresser

drawer.

It stuck again, this time with a firm shriek of wood against wood.

Out front, he heard the ratchet of the Porsche's emergency brake, the

opening of the driver's side door, the slam shut.

Faintly, Todd could hear himself moaning. He put the box in the askew

drawer, stood up, and lashed at it with his foot. The drawer closed neatly.

He stood blinking at it for a moment and then fled back down the hall. He

raced down the stairs. Halfway down them, he heard the rapid rattle of his

father's shoes on Dussander's walk. Todd vaulted over the banister, landed

lightly, and ran into the kitchen, the airmail pages fluttering from his hand.

A hammering on the door. 'Todd? Todd, it's me!'

And he could hear an ambulance siren in the distance as well. Dussander

had drifted away into semi-consciousness again.

'Coming, dad!' Todd shouted.

He put the airmail pages on the table, fanning them a little as if they had

been dropped in a hurry, and then he went back down the hall and let his

father in.

'Where is he?' Dick Bowden asked, shouldering past Todd.

'In the kitchen.'

'You did everything just right, Todd,' his father said, and then hugged him

in a rough, embarrassed way.

'I just hope I remembered everything,' Todd said modestly, and then

followed his father down the hall and into the kitchen.

In the rush to get Dussander out of the house, the letter was almost

completely ignored.

Todd's father picked it up briefly, then put it down when the medics came

in with the stretcher. Todd and his father followed the ambulance, and his

explanation of what had happened was accepted without question by the

doctor attending Dussander's case. 'Mr Denker' was, after all, seventy-nine

years old, and his habits were not the best The doctor also offered Todd a

brusque commendation for his quick thinking and action. Todd thanked him

wanly and then asked his father if they could go home.

As they rode back, Dick told him again how proud of him he was. Todd

barely heard him. He was thinking about his.30-.30 again.

That was the same day Morris Heisel broke his back.

Morris had never intended to break his back; all he had intended to do

was nail up the corner of the rain-gutter on the west side of his house.

Breaking his back was the furthest thing from his mind, he had had enough

grief in his life without that, thank you very much. His first wife had died at

the age of twenty-five, and both of their daughters were also dead. His

brother was dead, killed in a tragic car accident not far from Disneyland in

1971. Morris himself was Hearing sixty, and had a case of arthritis that was

worsening early and fast. He also had warts on both hands, warts that

seemed to grow back as fast as the doctor could burn them off. He was also

prone to migraine headaches, and in the last couple of years, that potzer

Rogan next door had taken to calling him 'Morris the Cat'.

Morris had wondered aloud to Lydia, his second wife, how Rogan would

like it if Morris took up calling him 'Rogan the haemorrhoid'.

'Quit it, Morris,' Lydia said on these occasions. 'You can't take a joke, you

never could take a joke, sometimes I wonder how I could marry a man with

absolutely no sense of humour. We go to Las Vegas,' Lydia had said,

addressing the empty kitchen as if an invisible horde of spectators which

only she could see was standing there, 'we see Buddy Hackett, and Morris

doesn't laugh once.'

Besides arthritis, warts, and migraines, Morris also had Lydia, who, God

love her, had developed into something of a nag over the last five years or

so ever since her hysterectomy. So he had plenty of sorrows and plenty of

problems without adding a broken back.

'Morris!' Lydia cried, coming to the back door and wiping suds from her

hands with a dishtowel. 'Morris, you come down off that ladder right now!'

'What?' He twisted his head so he could see her. He was on the second-

highest step of his aluminium stepladder. There was a bright yellow sticker

on this step which said: DANGER! BALANCE MAY SHIFT WITHOUT

WARNING ABOVE THIS STEP!

Morris was wearing his carpenter's apron with the wide pockets, one of

the pockets filled with nails and the other filled with heavy-duty staples.

The ground under the stepladder's feet was slightly uneven and the ladder

rocked a little when he moved. His neck ached with the unlovely prelude to

one of his migraines. He was out of temper. 'What?'

'Come down from there, I said, before you break your back.'

'I'm almost finished.'

'You're rocking on that ladder like you were on a boat, Morris. Come

down.'

'I'll come down when I'm done!' he said angrily. 'Leave me alone!'

'You'll break your back,' she reiterated dolefully, and went into the house

again.

Ten minutes later, as he was hammering the last nail into the rain-gutter,

tipped back nearly to the point of overbalancing, he heard a feline yowl

followed by fierce barking.

'What in God's name -?'

He looked around and the stepladder rocked alarmingly. At that same

moment, their cat-it was named Lover Boy, not Morris-tore around the

corner of the garage, its fur bushed out into hackles and its green eyes

flaring. The Regans' collie pup was in hot pursuit, its tongue hanging out

and its leash dragging behind it Lover Boy, apparently not superstitious, ran

under the stepladder. The collie pup followed.

'Look out, look out, you dumb mutt!' Morris shouted.

The ladder rocked. The pup bunted it with the side of its body. The ladder

tipped over and Morris tipped with it, uttering a howl of dismay. Nails and

staples flew out of his carpenter's apron. He landed half on and half off the

concrete driveway, and a gigantic agony flared in his back. He did not so

much hear his spine snap as feel it happen. Then the world greyed out for

awhile.

When things swam back into focus, he was still lying half on and half off

the driveway in a litter of nails and staples. Lydia was kneeling over him,

weeping. Rogan from next door was there, too, his face as white as a

shroud.

'I told you!' Lydia babbled. 'I told you to come down off that ladder! Now

look! Now look at this!'

Morris found he had absolutely no desire to look. A suffocating,

throbbing band of pain had cinched itself around his middle like a belt, and

that was bad, but

there was something much worse: he could feel nothing below that belt

of pain-nothing at all.

'Wail later,' he said huskily. 'Call the doctor now.'

'I'll do it,' Rogan said, and ran back to his own house.

'Lydia,' Morris said. He wet his lips.

'What? What, Morris?' She bent over him and a tear splashed on his

cheek. It was touching, he supposed, but it had made him flinch, and the

flinch had made the pain worse.

'Lydia, I also have one of my migraines.'

'Oh, poor darling! Poor Morris! But I told you -'

'I've got the headache because that potzer Rogan's dog barked all night

and kept me awake. Today the dog chases my cat and knocks over my

ladder and I think my back is broken.'

Lydia shrieked. The sound made Morris's head vibrate.

'Lydia,' he said, and wet his lips again.

'What, darling?'

'I have suspected something for many years. Now I am sure.'

'My poor Morris! What?'

'There is no God,' Morris said, and fainted.

They took him to Santa Donate and his doctor told him, at about the same

time that he would have ordinarily been sitting down to one of Lydia's

wretched suppers, that he would never walk again. By then they had put

him in a body cast. Blood and urine samples had been taken. Dr

Kemmelman had peered into his eyes and tapped his knees with a little

rubber hammer-but no reflexive twitch of the foot answered the taps. And at

every turn there was Lydia, the tears streaming from her eyes, as she used

up one handkerchief after another. Lydia, a woman who would have been at

home married to Job, went everywhere well supplied with little lace

snotrags, just in case reason for an extended crying spell should occur. She

had called her mother, and her mother would be here soon ("That's nice,

Lydia'-although if there was anyone on earth Morris honestly loathed, it was

Lydia's mother). She had called the rabbi, he would be here soon, too

('That's nice, Lydia'-although he hadn't set foot inside the synagogue in five

years and wasn't sure what the rabbi's name was). She had called his boss,

and while he wouldn't be here soon, he sent his greatest sympathies and

condolences ('That's nice, Lydia'-although if there was anyone in a class

with Lydia's mother, it was that cigar-chewing putz Frank Haskell). At last

they gave Morris a Valium and took Lydia away. Shortly afterwards, Morris

just drifted away-no worries, no migraine, no nothing. If they kept giving

him little blue pills like that, went his last thought, he would go on up that

stepladder and break his back again.

When he woke up-or regained consciousness, that was more like it-dawn

was just breaking, and the hospital was as quiet as Morris supposed it ever

got He felt very calm almost serene. He had no pain; his body felt

swaddled and weightless. His bed had been surrounded by some sort of

contraption like a squirrel cage- a thing of stainless steel bars, guy wires,

and pulleys. His legs were being held up by cables attached to this gadget.

His back seemed to be bowed by something beneath, but it was hard to tell-

he had only the angle of his vision to judge by.

Others have it worse, he thought. All over the world, others have it

worse. In Israel, the Palestinians kill busloads of farmers who were

committing the political crime of going into town to see a movie. The

Israelis cope with this injustice by dropping bombs on the Palestinians and

killing children along with whatever terrorists

may be there. Others have it worse than me which is not to say this is

good, don't get that idea, but others have it worse.

He lifted one hand with some effort-there was pain somewhere in his

body, but it was very faint-and made a weak fist in front of his eyes. There.

Nothing wrong with his hands. Nothing wrong with his arms, either. So he

couldn't feel anything below the waist, so what? There were people all over

the world paralyzed from the neck down. There were people with leprosy.

There were people dying of syphilis. Somewhere in the world right now,

there might be people walking down the jetway and onto a plane that was

going to crash. No, this wasn't good, but there were worse things in the

world. And there had been, once upon a time, much worse things in the

world. He raised his left arm. It seemed to float, disembodied, before his

eyes- a scrawny old man's arm with the muscles deteriorating. He was in a

hospital johnny but it had short sleeves and he could still read the number

on the forearm, tattooed there in faded blue ink. A499965214. Worse

things, yes, worse things than falling off a suburban stepladder and breaking

your back and being taken to a clean and sterile metropolitan hospital and

being given a Valium that was guaranteed to bubble your troubles away.

There were the showers, they were worse. His first wife, Heather, had died

in one of their filthy showers. There were the trenches that became graves-

he could close his eyes and still see the men lined up along the open maw of

the trenches, could still hear the volley of rifle fire, could still remember the

way they flopped backwards into the earth like badly made puppets. There

were the crematoriums, they were worse, too, toe crematoriums that filled

the air with the steady sweet smell of Jews burning like torches no one

could see. The horror-struck faces of old friends and relatives faces that

melted away like gutturing candles, faces that seemed to melt away before

your very eyes-thin, thinner, thinnest. Then one day they were gone.

Where? Where does a torch-flame go when the cold wind has blown it out?

Heaven? Hell? Lights in the darkness, candles in the wind. When Job

finally broke down and questioned, God asked him: Where were you when

I made the world? If Morris Heisel had been Job, he would have responded:

Where were You when my Heather was dying, You potzer, You? Watching

the Yankees and the Senators? If You can't pay attention to Your business

better than this, get out of my face. Yes, there were worse things than

breaking your back, he had no doubt of it But what sort of God would have

allowed him to break his back and become paralyzed for life after watching

his wife die, and his daughters, and his friends? No God at all, that was

Who.

A tear trickled from the corner of his ear. Outside the hospital room, a

bell rang softly. A nurse squeaked by on white crepe-soled shoes. His door

was ajar, and on the far wall of the corridor outside he could read the letters

NSIVE CA and guessed that the whole sign must read INTENSIVE CARE.

There was movement in the room- a rustle of bedclothes.

Moving very carefully, Morris turned his head to the right, away from the

door. He saw a night-table next to him with a pitcher of water on it. There

were two call-buttons on the table. Beyond it was another bed, and in the

bed was a man who looked even older and sicker than Morris felt. He was

not hooked into a giant exercise-wheel for gerbils like Morris was, but an

IV feed stood beside his bed and some sort of monitoring console stood at

its foot The man's skin was sunken and yellow. Lines around his mouth and

eyes had driven deep. His hair was yellowish-white, dry and lifeless. His

thin eyelids had a bruised and shiny look, and in his big nose Morris saw

the burst capillaries of the lifelong drinker.

Morris looked away and then looked back. As the dawn light grew

stronger and the hospital began to wake up, he began to have the strangest

feeling that he knew

his roommate. Could that be? The man looked to be somewhere between

seventy-five and eighty, and Morris didn't believe he knew anyone quite

that old-except for Lydia's mother, a horror Morris sometimes believed to

be older than the Sphinx, whom the woman closely resembled.

Maybe the guy was someone he had known in the past, maybe even

before he, Morris, came to America. Maybe. Maybe not. And why all of a

sudden did it seem to matter? For that matter, why had all his memories of

the camp, of Patin, come flooding back tonight, when he always tried to -

and most times succeeded in-keeping those things buried? He broke out in a

sudden rash of gooseflesh, as if he had stepped into some mental haunted

house where old bodies were unquiet and old ghosts walked. Could that be,

even here and now in this clean hospital, thirty years after those dark times

had ended? He looked away from the old man in the other bed, and soon he

had begun to feel sleepy again. It's a trick of your mind that this other man

seems familiar. Only your mind, amusing you in the best way it can,

amusing you the way it used to try to amuse you in-But he would not think

of that. He would not allow himself to think of that.

Drifting into sleep, he thought of a boast he had made to Heather (but

never to Lydia; it didn't pay to boast to Lydia; she was not like Heather, who

would always smile sweetly at his harmless puffing and crowing): I never

forget a face. Here was his chance to find out if that was still so. If he had

really known the man in the other bed at some time or other, perhaps he

could remember when and where.

Very close to sleep, drifting back and forth across its threshold, Morris

thought: Perhaps I knew him in the camp. That would be ironic indeed-what

they called 'a jest of God'.

What God? Morris Heisel asked himself again, and slept.

Todd graduated salutatorian of his class, just possibly because of his poor

grade on the trig final he had been studying for the night Dussander had his

heart attack. It dragged his final grade in the course down to 91, one point

below A- average.

A week after graduation, the Bowdens went to visit Mr. Denker at Santa

Donate General.

Todd fidgeted through fifteen minutes of banalities and thank-yous and

how-do-you-feels and was grateful for the break when the man in the other

bed asked him if he could come over for a minute.

'You'll pardon me,' the other man said apologetically. He was in a huge

body cast and was for some reason attached to an overhead system of

pulleys and wires. 'My name is Morris Heisel. I broke my back.'

That's too bad,' Todd said gravely.

'0y, too bad, he says! This boy has the gift of understatement!'

Todd started to apologize, but Heisel raised his hand, smiling a little. His

face was pale and tired, the face of any old man in the hospital facing a life

full of sweeping changes just ahead-and surely few of them for the better. In

that way, Todd thought, he and Dussander were alike.

'No need,' Morris said. 'No need to answer a rude comment. You are a

stranger. Does a stranger need to be inflicted with my problems?'

' "No man is an island, separate from the main -"' Todd began, and Morris

laughed.

'Donne, he quotes at me! A smart kid! Your friend there, is he very bad

off?'

'Well, the doctors say he's doing fine, considering his age. He's seventy

nine.'

'That old!' Morris exclaimed. 'He doesn't talk to me much, you know. But

from what he does say, I'd guess he's naturalized. Like me. I'm Polish, you

know. Originally, I mean. From Raden.'

'Oh?' Todd said politely.

'Yes. You know what they call an orange manhole cover in Radan?'

'No,' Todd said, smiling.

'Howard Johnson's,' Morris said, and laughed. Todd laughed, too.

Dussander glanced over at them, startled by the sound and frowning a little.

Then Monica said something and he looked back at her again.

'Is your friend naturalized?'

'Oh, yes,' Todd said. 'He's from Germany. Essen. Do you know that

town?'

'No,' Morris said, 'but I was only in Germany once. I wonder if he was in

the

war.'

'I really couldn't say.' Todd's eyes had gone distant.

'No? Well, it doesn't matter. That was a long time ago, the war. In another

two years there will be people in this country constitutionally eligible to

become President-President!-who weren't even born until after the war was

over. To them it must seem there is no difference between the Miracle of

Dunkirk and Hannibal taking his elephants over the Alps.'

'Were you in the war?' Todd asked.

'I suppose I was, in a manner of speaking. You're a good boy to visit such

an old man two old men, counting me.'

Todd smiled modestly.

'I'm tired now,' Morris said. 'Perhaps I'll sleep.'

'I hope you'll feel better very soon,' Todd said.

Morris nodded, smiled, and closed his eyes. Todd went back to

Dussander's bed, where his parents were just getting ready to leave-his dad

kept glancing at his watch and exclaiming with bluff heartiness at how late

it was getting. But Morris Heisel wasn't asleep, and he didn't sleep-not for a

long time.

Two days later, Todd came back to the hospital alone. This time, Morris

Heisel, immured in his body-cast, was deeply asleep in the other bed.

'You did well,' Dussander said quietly. 'Did you go back to the house

later?'

'Yes. I put the box back and burned the damned letter. I don't think

anyone was too interested in that letter, and I was afraid I don't know.' He

shrugged, unable to tell Dussander he'd been almost superstitiously afraid

about that letter-afraid that maybe someone would wander into the house

who could read German, someone who would notice references in the letter

that were ten, perhaps twenty years out of date.

'Next time you come, smuggle me in something to drink,' Dussander said.

'I find I don't miss the cigarettes, but -'

'I won't be back again,' Todd said flatly. 'Not ever. It's the end. We're

quits.'

'Quits.' Dussander folded his hands on his chest and smiled. It was not a

gentle smile but it was perhaps as close as Dussander could come to such

a thing. 'I thought that was on the cards. They are going to let me out of this

graveyard next week or so they promise. The doctor says I may have a

few years left in my skin yet.

I ask him how many, and he just laughs. I suspect that means no more

than three, and probably no more than two. Still, I may give him a surprise

and see in Orwell's year.'

Todd, who would have frowned suspiciously over such a reference two

years ago, now only nodded.

'But between you and me, boy, I have almost given up my hopes of

seeing the century turn.'

'I want to ask you about something,' Todd said, looking at Dussander

steadily. 'That's why I came in today. I want to ask you about something you

said once.'

Todd glanced over his shoulder at the man in the other bed and then drew

his chair closer to Dussander's bed. He could smell Dussander's smell, as

dry as the Egyptian room in the museum.

'So ask.'

'That wino. You said something about me having experience. First-hand

experience.

What was that supposed to mean?'

Dussander's smile widened a bit. 'I read the newspapers, boy. Old men

always read the newspapers, but not in the same way younger people do.

Buzzards are known to gather at the ends of certain airport runways in

South America when the crosswinds are treacherous, did you know that?

That is how an old man reads the newspaper. A month ago there was a story

in the Sunday paper. Not a front page story, no one cares enough about

bums and alcoholics to put them on the front page, but it was the lead story

in the feature section, IS SOMEONE STALKING SANTA DONATO'S

DOWN-AND-OUTS?-that's what it was called. Crude. Yellow journalism.

You Americans are famous for it' Todd's hands were clenched into fists,

hiding the butchered nails. He never read the Sunday papers, he had better

things to do with his time. He had of course checked the papers every day

for at least a week following each of his little adventures, and none of his

stewbums had ever gotten beyond page three. The idea that someone had

been making connections behind his back infuriated him. 'The story

mentioned several murders, extremely brutal murders. Stabbings,

bludgeonings. "Subhuman brutality" was how the writer put it, but you

know reporters. The writer of this lamentable piece admitted that there is a

high death-rate among these unfortunates, and that Santa Donato has had

more than its share of the indigent over the years. In any given year, not all

of these men die naturally, or of their own bad habits. There are frequent

murders. But in most cases the murderer is usually one of the deceased

degenerate's compatriots, the motive no more than an argument over a

penny-ante card-game or a bottle of muscatel. The killer is usually happy to

confess. He is filled with remorse.

'But these recent killings have not been solved. Even more ominous, to

this yellow journalist's mind-or whatever passes for his mind-is the high

disappearance rate over the last few years. Of course, he admits again, these

men are not much more than modern-day hobos. They come and go. But

some of these left without picking up welfare cheques or day-labour

cheques from Spell O' Work, which only pays on Fridays. Could some of

these have been victims of this yellow journalist's Wino Killer, he asks?

Victims who haven't been found? Pah!'

Dussander waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss such arrant

irresponsibility. 'Only titillation, of course. Give people a comfortable little

scare on Sunday morning. He calls up old bogies, threadbare but still

useful-the Cleveland Torso Murderer, Zodiac, the mysterious Mr X who

killed the Black Dahlia, Springheel Jack. Such drivel. But it makes me

think. What does an old man have to do but think when old friends don't

come to visit anymore?' Todd shrugged.

'I thought: "If I wished to help this odious yellow-dog journalist, which I

certainly do not, I could explain some of the disappearances. Not the

corpses found stabbed or bludgeoned, not them, God rest their besotted

souls, but some of the disappearances. Because at least some of the bums

who disappeared are in my cellar."'

'How many down there?' Todd asked in a low voice.

'Five,' Dussander said calmly. 'Counting the one you helped me dispose

of, just five.'

'You're really nutso,' Todd said. The skin below his eyes had gone white

and shiny. 'At some point you just blew all your fucking wheels.'

'"Blew my wheels." What a charming idiom! Perhaps you're right! But

then I said to myself: "This newspaper jackal would love to pin the murders

and the disappearances on the same somebody-his hypothetical Wino Killer.

But I think maybe that's not what happened at all." Then I say to myself:

"Do I know anybody who might be doing such things? Somebody who has

been under as much strain as I have during the last few years? Someone

who has also been listening to old ghosts rattle their chains?" And the

answer is yes. I know you, boy.'

'I've never killed anyone.'

The image that came was not of the winos; they weren't people, not really

people at all.

The image that came was of himself crouched behind the dead tree,

peering through the telescopic sight of his.30-.30, the crosshairs fixed on

the temple of the man with the scuzzy beard, the man driving the Brat pick-

up.

'Perhaps not,' Dussander agreed, amicably enough. 'Yet you took hold so

well the other night. Your surprise was mostly anger at having been put in

such a dangerous position by an old man's infirmity, I think. Am I wrong?'

'No, you're not wrong,' Todd said. 'I was pissed off at you, and I still am.

I covered it up for you because you've got something in a safety deposit box

that could destroy my life.'

'No. I do not'

'What? What are you talking about?'

'It was as much a bluff as your "letter left with a friend". You never wrote

such a letter, there never was such a friend, and I have never written a single

word about our association, shall I call it? Now I lay my cards on the

table. You saved my life. Never mind that you acted only to protect

yourself; that does not change how speedily and efficiently you acted. I

cannot hurt you, boy. I tell you that freely. I have looked death in the face

and it frightens me, but not as badly as! thought it would. There is no

document. It is as you say: we are quits.'

Todd smiled: a weird upward corkscrewing of the lips. A strange,

sardonic light danced and fluttered in his eyes.

'Herr Dussander,' he said, 'if only I could believe that'.

In the evening Todd walked down to the slope overlooking the freeway,

climbed down to the dead tree, and sat on it. It was just past twilight. The

evening was warm. Car headlights cut through the dusk in long yellow

daisy chains.

There is no document.

He hadn't realized how completely irretrievable the entire situation was

until the discussion that had followed. Dussander suggested Todd search the

house for a safety deposit key, and when he didn't find one, that would

prove there was no safety deposit box and hence no document. But a key

could be hidden anywhere-it could be put in a Crisco can and then buried, it

could be put in a Sucrets tin and slid behind a board that had been loosened

and then replaced; he might even have ridden the bus to

San Diego and put it behind one of the rocks in the decorative stone wall

which surrounds the bears' environmental area. For that matter, Todd went

on, Dussander could even have thrown the key away. Why not? He had

only needed it once, to put his written document in. If he died, someone else

would take it out. Dussander nodded reluctantly at this, but after a moment's

thought he made another suggestion. When he got well enough to go home,

he would have the boy call every single bank in Santa Donato. He would

tell each bank official he was calling for his grandfather. Poor grandfather,

he would say, had grown lamentably senile over the last two years, and now

he had misplaced the key to his safety deposit box. Even worse, he could no

longer remember which bank the box was in. Could they just check their

files for an Arthur Denker, no middle initial? And when Todd drew a blank

at every bank in town-Todd was already shaking his head again. First, a

story like that was almost guaranteed to raise suspicions. It was too pat.

They would probably suspect a con-game and get in touch with the police.

Even if every one of them bought the story, it would do no good. If none of

the almost nine dozen banks in Santa Donato had a box in the Denker name,

it didn't mean that Dussander hadn't rented one in San Diego, LA, or any

town in between. At last Dussander gave up.

'You have all the answers, boy. All, at least, but one. What would I stand

to gain by lying to you? I invented this story to protect myself from you-

that is a motive. Now I am trying to uninvent it. What possible gain do you

see in that?' Dussander got laboriously up on one elbow.

'For that matter, why would I need a document at all, at this point? I

could destroy your life from this hospital bed, if that was what I wanted. I

could open my mouth to the first passing doctor, they are all Jews, they

would all know who I am, or at least who I was. But why would I do this?

You are a fine student You have a fine career ahead of you unless you get

careless with those winos of yours.'

Todd's face froze. 'I never told you -'

'I know. You never heard of them, you never touched so much as a hair

on their scaly, tick-ridden heads, all right, good, fine. I say no more about it.

Only tell me, boy: why should I lie about this? We are quits, you say. But I

tell you we can only be quits if we can trust each other.'

Now, sitting behind the dead tree on the slope which ran down to the

freeway, looking at all the anonymous headlights disappearing endlessly

like slow tracer bullets, he knew well enough what he was afraid of.

Dussander talking about trust. That made him afraid.

The idea that Dussander might be tending a small but perfect flame of

hatred deep in his heart, that made him afraid, too.

A hatred of Todd Bowden, who was young, clean-featured, unwrinkled;

Todd Bowden, who was an apt pupil with a whole bright life stretching

ahead of him. But what he feared most was Dussander's refusal to use his

name. Todd. What was so hard about that, even for an old Kraut whose

teeth were mostly false? Todd. One syllable. Easy to say. Put your tongue

against the roof of your mouth, drop your teeth a little, replace your tongue,

and it was out. Yet Dussander had always called him 'boy'. Only that.

Contemptuous. Anonymous. Yes, that was it, anonymous. As anonymous as

a concentration camp serial number.

Perhaps Dussander was telling the truth. No, not just perhaps; probably.

But there were those fears the worst of them being Dussander's refusal to

use his name. And at the root of it all was his own inability to make a hard

and final decision. At the root of it all was a rueful truth: even after four

years of visiting Dussander, he still didn't know what went on in the old

man's head. Perhaps he wasn't such an apt pupil after all. Cars and cars and

cars. His fingers itched to hold his rifle. How many could he get? Three?

Six? An even baker's dozen? And how many miles to Babylon? He stirred

restlessly, uneasily.

Only Dussander's death would tell the final truth, he supposed. Sometime

during the next five years, maybe even sooner. Three to five it sounded

like a prison sentence. Todd Bowden, this court hereby sentences you to

three to five for associating with a known war criminal. Three to five of bad

dreams and cold sweats.

Sooner or later Dussander would simply drop dead. Then the waiting

would begin. The knot in the stomach every time the phone or the doorbell

rang.

He wasn't sure he could stand that.

His fingers itched to hold the gun and Todd curled them into fists and

drove both fists into his crotch. Sick pain swallowed his belly and he lay for

some time afterwards in a writhing ball on the ground, his lips pulled back

in a silent shriek. The pain was dreadful, but it blotted out the endless

parade of thoughts.

At least for a while.

For Morris Heisel, that Sunday was a day of miracles.

The Atlanta Braves, his favourite baseball team, swept a double-header

from the high and mighty Cincinnati Reds by scores of 7-1 and 8-0. Lydia,

who boasted smugly of always taking care of herself and whose favourite

saying was 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' slipped on

her friend Janet's wet kitchen floor and sprained her hip. She was at home in

bed. It wasn't serious, not at all, and thank God (what God?) for that, but it

meant she wouldn't be able to visit him for at least two days, maybe as long

as four.

Four days without Lydia! Four days that he wouldn't have to hear about

how she had warned him that the stepladder was wobbly and how he was

up too high on it in the bargain. Four days when he wouldn't have to listen

to her tell him how she'd always said the Rogans' pup was going to cause

them grief, always chasing Lover Boy that way. Four days without Lydia

asking him if he wasn't glad now that she had kept after him about sending

in that insurance application, for if she had not, they would surely be on

their way to the poorhouse now. Four days without having Lydia tell him

that many people lived perfectly normal lives-almost, anyway -paralyzed

from the waist down; why, every museum and gallery in the city had

wheelchair ramps as well as stairs, and there were even special buses. After

this observation, Lydia would smile bravely and then inevitably burst into

tears.

Morris drifted off into a contented late afternoon nap.

When he woke up it was half-past five in the afternoon. His roommate

was asleep. He still hadn't placed Denker, but all the same he felt sure that

he had known the man at some time or other. He had begun to ask Denker

about himself once or twice, but then something had held him back. That

same something kept him from making more than the most banal

conversation with the man-the weather, the last earthquake, the next

earthquake, and yeah, the Guide says Myron Floren is going to come back

for a special guest appearance this weekend on the Welk show.

Morris told himself he was holding back because it gave him a mental

game to play, and when you were in a body-cast from your shoulders to

your hips, mental games can come in handy. If you had a little mental

contest going on, you didn't have to spend quite so much time wondering

how it was going to be, pissing through a catheter for the rest of your life.

If he came right out and asked Denker, the mental game would probably

come to a swift and unsatisfying conclusion. They would narrow their pasts

down to some common experience- a train trip, a boat ride, possibly even

the camp. Denker might have been in Patin; there had been plenty of

German Jews there.

On the other hand, one of the nurses had told him Denker would

probably be going home in a week or two. If Morris couldn't figure it out by

then, he would mentally declare the game lost and ask the man straight out:

Say, I've had the feeling I know you-But there was more to it than just that,

he admitted to himself. There was something in his feelings, a nasty sort of

undertow, that made him think of that story 'The Monkey's Paw', where

every wish had been granted as the result of some evil turn of fate. The old

couple who came into possession of the paw wished for a hundred dollars

and received it as a gift of condolence when their only son was killed in a

nasty mill accident. Then the mother had wished for the son to return to

them. They had heard footsteps dragging up their walk shortly afterwards;

then pounding on the door, a perfect fusillade of blows.

The mother, mad with joy, had gone rushing down the stairs to let in her

only child. The father, mad with quite another emotion, scrabbled through

the darkness for the dried paw, found it at last, and wished his son dead

again. The mother threw the door open a moment later and found nothing

on the stoop but an eddy of night wind.

In some way Morris felt that perhaps he did know where he and Denker

had been acquainted, but that his knowledge was like the son of the old

couple in the story-returned from the grave, but not as he was in his

mother's memory; returned, instead, horribly crushed and mangled from his

fall into the gnashing, whirling machinery. He felt that his knowledge of

Denker might be a subconscious thing, pounding on the door between that

area of his mind and that of rational understanding and recognition,

demanding admittance and that another part of him was searching

frantically for the monkey's paw, or its psychological equivalent; for the

talisman that would wish away the knowledge forever.

Now he looked at Denker, frowning.

Denker. Denker. Where have I known you, Denker? Was it Patin? Is that

why I don't want to know? But surely, two survivors of a common horror do

not have to be afraid of each other. Unless, of course

He frowned. He felt very close to it, suddenly, but his feet were tingling,

breaking his concentration, annoying him. They were tingling in just the

way a limb tingles when you've slept on it and it's returning to normal

circulation. If it wasn't for the damned body-cast, he could sit up and rub his

feet until that tingle went away. He could-Morris's eyes widened.

For a long time he lay perfectly still, Lydia forgotten, Denker forgotten,

Patin forgotten, everything forgotten except that tingly feeling in his feet

Yes, both feet, but it was stronger in the right one. When you felt that tingle,

you said My foot went to sleep.'

But what you really meant, of course, was My foot is waking up.

Morris fumbled for the call-button. He pressed it again and again until

the nurse came.

The nurse tried to dismiss it-she had had hopeful patients before. His

doctor wasn't in the building, and the nurse didn't want to call him at home.

Dr Kemmelman had a vast reputation for evil temper especially when he

was called at home. Morris wouldn't let her dismiss it. He was a mild man,

but now he was prepared to make more than a fuss; he was prepared to

make an uproar if that's what it took. The Braves had taken two. Lydia had

sprained her hip. But good things came in threes, everyone knew that. At

last the nurse came back with an intern, a young man named Dr Timpnell

whose hair looked as if it had last been cut by a Lawn Boy with very dull

blades. Dr Timpnell pulled a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of his white

pants, folded out the Phillips screwdriver attachment, and ran it from the

toes of Morris's right foot down to the heel.

The foot did not curl, but his toes twitched-it was an obvious twitch, too

definite to miss. Morris burst into tears.

Timpnell, looking rather dazed, sat beside him on the bed and patted his

hand.

'This sort of thing happens from time to time,' he said (possibly from his

wealth of practical experience, which stretched back perhaps as far as six

months). 'No doctor predicts it, but it does happen. And apparently it's

happened to you.'

Morris nodded through his tears.

'Obviously, you're not totally paralyzed.' Timpnell was still patting his

hand. 'But I wouldn't try to predict if your recovery will be slight, partial, or

total. I doubt if Dr Kemmelman will, either. I suspect you'll have to undergo

a lot of physical therapy, and not all of it will be pleasant. But it will be

more pleasant than you know.'

'Yes,' Morris said through his tears. 'I know. Thank God!' He remembered

telling Lydia there was no God and felt his face fill up with hot blood.

'I'll see that Dr Kemmelman is informed,' Timpnell said, giving Morris's

hand a final pat and rising.

'Could you call my wife?' Morris asked. Because, doom-crying and hand-

wringing aside, he felt something for her. Maybe it was even love, an

emotion which seemed to have little to do with sometimes feeling like you

could wring a person's neck.

'Yes, I'll see that it's done. Nurse, would you -?'

'Of course, doctor,' the nurse said, and Timpnell could barely stifle his

grin.

"Thank you,' Morris said, wiping his eyes with a Kleenex from the box

on the nightstand.

Thank you very much.'

Timpnell went out. At some point during the discussion, Mr. Denker had

awakened.

Morris considered apologizing for all the noise, or perhaps for his tears,

and then decided no apology was necessary.

'You are to be congratulated, I take it,' Mr Denker said.

'Well see,' Morris said, but like Timpnell, he was barely able to stifle his

grin. 'We'll see.'

'Things have a way of working out,' Denker replied vaguely, and then

turned on the TV with the remote control device. It was now quarter to six,

and they watched the last of Hee-Haw. It was followed by the evening

news. Unemployment was worse. Inflation was not so bad. The hostages

were still hostages. A new Gallup poll showed that, if the election were to

be held right then, there were four Republican candidates who could beat

Jimmy Carter. And there had been racial incidents following the murder of

a black child in Atlanta (it would be another six months before a grisly

pattern of murder began to emerge in the Atlanta murders)-'A night of

violence', the

newscaster called it. Closer to home, an unidentified man had been found

in an orchard near Highway 46, stabbed and bludgeoned.

Lydia called just before 6:30. Dr Kemmelman had called her and, based

on the young intern's report, he had been cautiously optimistic. Lydia was

cautiously joyous. She vowed to come in the following day even if it killed

her. Morris told her he loved her.

Tonight he loved everyone -Lydia, Dr Timpnell with his Lawn Boy

haircut, Mr Denker, even the young girl who brought in the supper trays as

Morris hung up.

Supper was hamburgers, mashed potatoes, a carrots-and-peas

combination, and small dishes of ice cream for dessert. The candy striper

who served it was Felice, a shy blonde girl of perhaps twenty. She had her

own good news-her boyfriend had landed a job as a computer programmer

with IBM and had formally asked her to marry him.

Mr. Denker, who exuded a certain courtly charm that all the young ladies

responded to, expressed great pleasure. 'Really, how wonderful. You must

sit down and tell us all about it. Tell us everything. Omit nothing.'

Felice blushed and smiled and said she couldn't do that. 'We've still got

the rest of B wing to do and C wing after that. And look, here it is six-

thirty!'

'Then tomorrow night, for sure. We insist-don't we, Mr. Heisel?'

'Yes indeed,' Morris murmured, but his mind was a million miles away.

(you must sit down and tell us all about it)

Words spoken in that exact-same bantering tone. He had heard them

before; of that there could be no doubt. But had Denker been the one to

speak them? Had he?

(tell us everything)

The voice of an urbane man. A cultured man. But there was a threat in

the voice. A steel hand in a velvet glove. Yes.

Where?

(tell us everything. Omit nothing.)

(? Patin?)

Morris Heisel looked at his supper. Mr Denker had already fallen to with

a will. The encounter with Felice had left him in the best of spirits-the way

he had been after the young boy with the blond hair came to visit him.

'A nice girl,' Denker said, his words muffled by a mouthful of carrots and

peas.

'Oh yes-'

(you must sit down)

'- Felice, you mean. She's (and tell us all about it.)

'very sweet.'

(tell us everything. Omit nothing.)

He looked down at his own supper, suddenly remembering how it got to

be in the camps after a while. At first you would have killed for a scrap of

meat, no matter how maggoty or green with decay. But after a while, that

crazy hunger went away and your belly lay inside your middle like a small

grey rock. You felt you would never be hungry again.

Until someone showed you food.

('tell us everything, my friend. Omit nothing. You must sit down and tell

us AAALLLLL about it.')

The main course on Morris's plastic hospital tray was hamburger. Why

should it suddenly make him think of lamb? Not mutton, not chops-mutton

was often stringy, chops often tough, and a person whose teeth had rotted

out like old stumps would perhaps not be overly tempted by mutton or a

chop. No, what he thought of was a savoury lamb stew, gravy-rich and full

of vegetables. Soft, tasty vegetables. Why think of lamb stew? Why, unless-

The door banged open. It was Lydia, her face rosy with smiles. An

aluminium crutch was propped in her armpit and she was walking like

Marshall Dillon's friend Chester. 'Morris? she trilled. Trailing her and

looking just as tremulously happy was Emma Rogan from next door.

Mr Denker, startled, dropped his fork. He cursed softly under his breath

and picked it up off the floor with a wince.

'It's so WONDERFUL!' Lydia was almost baying with excitement. 'I

called Emma and asked her if we could come tonight instead of tomorrow, I

had the crutch already, and I said, "Em", I said, "if I can't bear this agony

for Morris, what kind of wife am I to him?"

Those are my very words, aren't they, Emma?'

Emma Rogan, perhaps remembering that her collie pup had caused at

least some of the problem, nodded eagerly.

'So I called the hospital,' Lydia said, shrugging her coat off and settling in

for a good long visit, 'and they said it was past visiting hours but in my case

they would make an exception, except we couldn't stay too long because we

might bother Mr Denker. We aren't bothering you, are we, Mr Denker?'

'No, dear lady,' Mr Denker said resignedly.

'Sit down, Emma, take Mr Denker's chair, he's not using it. Here, Morris,

stop with the ice cream, you're slobbering it all over yourself, just like a

baby. Never mind, we'll have you up and around in no time. I'll feed it to

you. Goo-goo, ga-ga. Open wide over the teeth, over the gums look out,

stomach, here it comes! No, don't say a word, mommy knows best. Would

you look at him, Emma, he hardly has any hair left and I don't wonder,

thinking he might never walk again. It's God's mercy. I told him that

stepladder was wobbly. I said, "Morris," I said, "Come down off there

before-"'

She fed him ice cream and chattered for the next hour and by the time she

left, hobbling ostentatiously on the crutch while Emma held her other arm,

thoughts of lamb stew and voices echoing up through the years were the last

things in Morris Heisel's mind. He was exhausted. To say it had been a busy

day was putting it mildly. Morris fell deeply asleep.

He awoke sometime between three and four a. m. with a scream locked

behind

his lips.

Now he knew. He knew exactly where and exactly when he had been

acquainted with the man in the other bed. Except his name had not been

Denker then. Oh no, not at all.

He had awakened from the most terrible nightmare of his whole life.

Someone had given him and Lydia a monkey's paw, and they had wished

for money. Then, somehow, a Western Union boy in a Hitler Youth uniform

had been in the room with them. He handed Morris a telegram which read:

REGRET TO INFORM YOU BOTH DAUGHTERS DEAD STOP PATIN

CONCENTRATION CAMP STOP GREATEST REGRETS AT THIS

FINAL SOLUTION STOP COMMANDANTS LETTER FOLLOWS

STOP WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING AND OMIT NOTHING STOP

PLEASE ACCEPT OUR CHECK FOR 100 REICHMARKS ON

DEPOSIT YOUR BANK TOMORROW STOP SIGNED ADOLF HITLER

CHANCELLOR.

A great wail from Lydia, and although she had never even seen Morris's

daughters, she held the monkey's paw high and wished for them to be

returned to life.

The room went dark. And suddenly, from outside, came the sound of

dragging, lurching footfalls.

Morris was down on his hands and knees in a darkness that suddenly

stank of smoke and gas and death. He was searching for the paw. One wish

left If he could find the paw he could wish this dreadful dream away. He

would spare himself the sight of his daughters, thin as scarecrows, their

eyes deep wounded holes, their numbers burning on the scant flesh of their

arms.

Hammering on the door, a perfect fusillade of blows.

In the nightmare, his search for the paw became ever more frenzied, but

it bore no fruit. It seemed to go on for years. And then, behind him, the door

crashed open. No, he thought I won't look. I'll close my eyes. Rip them

from my head If I have to, but I won't look.

But he did look. He had to look. In the dream it was as if huge hands had

grasped his head and wrenched it around.

It was not his daughters standing in the doorway; it was Denker. A much

younger Denker, a Denker who wore a Nazi SS uniform, the cap with its

lightning-bolt insignia cocked rakishly to one side. His buttons gleamed

heartlessly, his boots were polished to a killing gloss.

Clasped in his arms was a huge and slowly bubbling pot of lamb stew.

And the dream-Denker, smiling his dark, suave smile, said: You must sit

down and tell us all about it-as one friend to another, eh? We have heard

that gold has been hidden. That tobacco has been hoarded. That it was not

food-poisoning with Schneibel at all but powdered glass in his supper two

nights ago. You must not insult our intelligence by pretending you know

nothing. You know EVERYTHING. So tell it all. Omit nothing.

And in the dark, smelling the maddening aroma of the stew, he told them

everything. His stomach, which had been a small grey rock, was now a

raving tiger. Words spilled helplessly from his lips. They spewed from him

in the senseless sermon of a lunatic, truth and falsehood all mixed up

together.

Brodin has his mother's wedding ring taped below his scrotum!

("you must sit down')

Laslo and Herman Dorsky have talked about rushing guard tower number

three!

('and tell us everything!')

Rachel Tannenbaum's husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who

comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is

always picking his nose and then putting his fingers in his mouth,

Tannenbaum gave some of it to Booger-Eater so he wouldn't take his wife's

pearl earrings!

('oh that makes no sense at all you've mixed up two different stories I

think but that's all right quite all right we'd rather have you mix up two

stories than omit one completely you must omit NOTHING!')

There is a man who has been calling out his dead son's name in order to

get double rations!

('tell us his name')

I don't know it but I can point him out to you please yes I can show him

to you I will I will I will I ('tell us everything you know') will I will I will I

will I will I will I will I Until he swam up into consciousness with a scream

in his throat like fire.

Trembling uncontrollably, he looked at the sleeping form in the other

bed. He found himself staring particularly at the wrinkled, caved-in mouth.

Old tiger with no teeth.

Ancient and vicious rogue elephant with one tusk gone and the other

rooted loose in its socket Senile monster.

'Oh my God,' Morris Heisel whispered. His voice was high and faint,

inaudible to anyone but himself. Tears trickled down his cheeks towards his

ears. 'Oh dear God, the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is

sleeping in the same room with me, my God, oh dear dear God, he is here

with me now in this room.'

The tears began to flow faster now-tears of rage and horror, hot, scalding.

He trembled and waited for morning, and morning did not come for an

age.

The next day, Monday, Todd was up at six o'clock in the morning and

poking listlessly at a scrambled egg he had fixed for himself when his father

came down still dressed in his monogrammed bathrobe and slippers.

'Mumph,' he said to Todd, going past him to the refrigerator for orange

juice.

Todd grunted back without looking up from his book, one of the 87th

Squad mysteries.

He had been lucky enough to land a summer job with a landscaping outfit

that operated out of Sausalito. That would have been much too far to

commute ordinarily, even if one of his parents had been willing to loan him

a car for the summer (neither was), but his father was working on-site not

far from there, and he was able to drop Todd off at a bus stop on his way

and pick him up at the same place on his way back. Todd was less than wild

about the arrangement; he didn't like riding home from work with his father

and absolutely detested riding to work with him in the morning. It was in

the mornings that he felt the most naked, when the wall between what he

was and what he might be seemed the thinnest. It was worse after a night of

bad dreams, but even if no dreams had come in the night, it was bad. One

morning he realized with a fright so sudden it was almost terror that he had

been seriously considering reaching across his father's briefcase, grabbing

the wheel of the Porsche, and sending them corkscrewing into the two

express lanes, cutting a swath of destruction through the morning

commuters.

'You want another egg, Todd-O?'

'No thanks, dad.' Dick Bowden ate them fried. How could anyone stand

to eat a fried egg? On the grill of the Jenn-Aire for two minutes, then over

easy. What you got on your plate at the end looked like a giant dead eye

with a cataract over it, an eye that would bleed orange when you poked it

with your fork.

He pushed his scrambled egg away. He had barely touched it.

Outside, the morning paper slapped the step.

His father finished cooking, turned off the grill, and came to the table.

'Not hungry this morning, Todd-O?'

You call me that one more time and I'm going to stick my knife right up

your fucking nose Dad-O.

'Not much appetite, I guess.'

Dick grinned affectionately at his son; there was still a tiny dab of

shaving cream on the boy's right ear. 'Betty Trask stole your appetite. That's

my guess.'

'Yeah, maybe that's it.' He offered a wan smile that vanished as soon as

his father went down the stairs from the breakfast nook to get the paper.

Would it wake you up if I told you what a cunt she is, Dad-O? How about if

I said, 'Oh, by the way, did you know your good friend Ray Trask's

daughter is one of the biggest sluts in Santa Donate? She'd kiss her own

twat If she was double-jointed, Dad-O. That's how much she thinks of it.

Just a stinking little slut. Two lines of coke and she's yours for the night.

And If you don't happen to have any coke, she's still yours for the night.

She'd fuck a dog If she couldn't get a man.' Think that'd wake you up, Dad-

O? Get you a flying start on the day?

He pushed the thoughts away viciously, knowing they wouldn't stay

gone.

His father came back with the paper. Todd glimpsed the headline: SPY

TRIALS CLOSER, STATE DEPARTMENT SOURCE SAYS.

Dick sat down. 'Betty's a fine-looking girl,' he said. 'She reminds me of

your mother when I first met her.'

'Is that so?'

'Pretty young fresh.' Dick Bowden's eyes had gone vague. Now they

came back, focusing almost anxiously on his son. 'Not that your mother isn't

still a fine-looking woman. But at that age a girl has a certain glow, I

guess you'd say. It's there for a while, and then it's gone.' He shrugged and

opened the paper. 'C'est la vie, I guess.'

She's a bitch in heat. Maybe that's what makes her glow.

'You're treating her right, aren't you, Todd-O?' His father was making his

usual rapid trip through the paper towards the sports pages. 'Not getting too

fresh?'

'Everything's cool, dad.'

(if he doesn't stop pretty soon I'll I'll do something. Scream. Throw

his coffee in his face. Something.)

'Ray thinks you're a fine boy,' Dick said absently. He had at last reached

the sports. He became absorbed. There was blessed silence at the breakfast

table.

Betty Trask had been all over him the very first time they went out. He

had taken her to the local lover's lane after the movie because he knew it

would be expected of him; they could swap spits for half an hour or so and

have all the right things to tell their respective friends the next day. She

could roll her eyes and tell how she had fought off his advances -boys were

so tiresome, really, and she never fucked on the first date, she wasn't that

kind of girl. Her friends would agree and then all of them would troop into

the girls' room and do whatever it was they did in there-put on fresh

makeup, smoke Tampax, whatever.

And for a guy well, you had to make out. You had to get at least to

second base and try for third. Because there were reputations and

reputations. Todd couldn't have cared less about having a stud reputation;

he only wanted a reputation for being normal. And if you didn't at least try,

word got around. People started to wonder if you were all right.

So he took them up on Jane's Hill, kissed them, felt their tits, went a little

further than that if they would allow it. And that was it. The girl would stop

him, he would put up a little goodnatured argument, and then take her

home. No worries about what might be said in the girls' room the next day.

No worries that anyone was going to think Todd Bowden was anything but

normal. Except-Except Betty Trask was the kind of girl who fucked on the

first date. On every date. And in between dates.

The first time had been a month or so before the goddam Nazi's heart

attack, and Todd thought he had done pretty well for a virgin perhaps for

the same reason a young pitcher will do well if he's tapped to throw the

biggest game of the year with no

forewarning. There had been no time to worry, to get all strung up about

it Always before, Todd had been able to sense when a girl had made up her

mind that on the next date she would just allow herself to be carried away.

He was aware that he was personable and that both his looks and his

prospects were good. The kind of boy their cunty mothers regarded as 'a

good catch'. And when he sensed that physical capitulation was about to

happen, he would start dating some other girl. And whatever it said about

his personality, Todd was able to admit to himself that if he ever started

dating a truly frigid girl, he would probably be happy to date her for years

to come. Maybe even marry her.

But the first time with Betty had gone fairly well-she was no virgin, even

if he was. She had to help him get his cock into her, but she seemed to take

that as a matter of course.

And halfway through the act itself she had gurgled up from the blanket

they were lying on: 'I just love to fuck!' It was the tone of voice another girl

might have used to express her love for strawberry whirl ice cream.

Later encounters-there had been five of them (five and a half, he

supposed, if you wanted to count last night)-hadn't been so good. They had,

in fact, gotten worse at what seemed an exponential rate although he didn't

believe even now that Betty had been aware of that (at least not until last

night). In fact, quite the opposite. Betty apparently believed she had found

the battering-ram of her dreams.

Todd hadn't felt any of the things he was supposed to feel at a time like

that. Kissing her lips was like kissing warm but uncooked liver. Having her

tongue in his mouth only made him wonder what kind of germs she was

carrying, and sometimes he thought he could smell her fillings-an

unpleasant metallic odour, like chrome. Her breasts were bags of meat. No

more.

Todd had done it twice more with her before Dussander's heart attack.

Each time he had more trouble getting erect In both cases he had finally

succeeded by using a fantasy. She was stripped naked in front of all their

friends. Crying. Todd was forcing her to walk up and down between them

while he cried out: Show your tits! Let them see your snatch, you cheap

slut! Spread your cheeks! That's right, bend over and SPREAD them!

Betty's appreciation was not at all surprising. He was a very good lover, not

in spite of his problems but because of them. Getting hard was only the first

step. Once you achieved erection, you had to have an orgasm. The fourth

time they had done it-this was three days after Dussander's heart attack-he

had pounded away at her for over ten minutes. Betty Trask thought she had

died and gone to heaven; she had three orgasms and was trying for a fourth

when Todd recalled an old fantasy what was, in fact, the First Fantasy. The

girl on the table, clamped and helpless. The huge dildo. The rubber

squeeze-bulb. Only now, desperate and sweaty and almost insane with his

desire to come and get this horror over with, the face of the girl on the table

became Betty's face. That brought on a joyless, rubbery spasm that he

supposed was, technically, at least, an orgasm. A moment later Betty was

whispering in his ear, her breath warm and redolent of Juicy Fruit gum:

'Lover, you do me any old time. Just call me.' Todd had nearly groaned

aloud.

The nub of his dilemma was this: Wouldn't his reputation suffer if he

broke off with a girl who so obviously wanted to put out for him? Wouldn't

people wonder why? Part of him said they would not. He remembered

walking down the hall behind two senior boys during his freshman year and

hearing one of them tell the other he had broken off with his girlfriend. The

other wanted to know why. 'Fucked 'er out,' the first said, and both of them

bellowed goatish laughter.

If someone asks me why I dropped her, I'll just say I fucked her out. But

what if she says we only did it five times? Is that enough? What? How

much? How many? Who'll talk? What'll they say?

So his mind ran on, as restless as a hungry rat in an insoluble maze. He

was vaguely aware that he was turning a minor problem into a big problem,

and that his very inability to solve the problem had something to say about

how shaky he had gotten. But knowing it brought him no fresh ability to

change his behaviour, and he sank into a black depression.

College. College was the answer. College offered an excuse to break with

Betty that no one could question. But September seemed so far away.

The fifth time it had taken him almost twenty minutes to get hard, but

Betty had proclaimed the experience well worth the wait. And then, last

night, he hadn't been able to perform at all.

'What are you, anyway?' Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty

minutes of manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of

patience. 'Are you one of those AC/DC guys'?'

He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he'd had his.30-.30-

'Well, I'll be a son of a gun! Congratulations, son!'

'Huh?' He looked up and out of his black study.

'You made the Southern Cat High School All-Stars!' His father was

grinning with pride and pleasure.

'Is that so?' For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking

about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. 'Say, yeah, Coach

Haller mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he

was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I never expected anything to

happen.'

'Well Jesus, you don't seem very excited about it!'

'I'm still trying (who gives a ripe fuck?) to get used to the idea.' With a

huge effort, he managed a grin. 'Can I see the article?' His father handed the

paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet 'I'm going to wake Monica

up. She's got to see this before we leave.' No, God -I can't face both of them

this morning.

'Aw, don't do that You know she won't be able to get back to sleep if you

wake her up. Well leave it for her on the table.'

'Yes, I suppose we could do that. You're a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.'

He clapped Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the

same time he shrugged his shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his

father laugh. Todd opened his eyes again and looked at the paper.

4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the headline

read. Beneath were pictures of them in their uniforms-the catcher and left-

fielder from Fairview High, the jigaboo shortstop from Mountford, and

Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the world from beneath the bill

of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy DeLyons had made

the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about

DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made

him feel good, but he wasn't fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what

Billy DeLyons was. Maybe he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she

was another sheeny. He had wondered about that for a long time, and last

night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were passing for white. One look

at her nose and that olive complexion-her old man's was even worse-and

you knew. That was probably why he hadn't been able to get it up. It was

simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they

think they were kidding, calling themselves Trask? 'Congratulations again,

son.'

He looked up and first saw his father's hand stuck out, then his father's

foolishly grinning face.

Your buddy Trask is a yid! He heard himself yelling into his father's face.

That's why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That's the

reason! Then, on the heels of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at

moments like this rose up from deep inside him, shutting off the rising flood

of irrationality, as if (GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW) behind

steel gates.

He took his father's hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father's

proud face. Said: 'Jeez, thanks, dad.'

They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica,

which Dick insisted Todd write and sign: Your All-Star Son, Todd.

Ed French, aka 'Pucker' French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, also

aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San

Remo for a guidance counsellors' convention. It was a waste of time if ever

there had been one-all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to

agree on anything-and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and

discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he

discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives

small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous

views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn't have a movie theatre or a

bowling alley, and Ed hadn't wanted to go in the place's only bar-it had a

dirt parking lot filled with pick-up trucks, and most of the pick-ups had

Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn't afraid of

being picked on, but he hadn't wanted to spend an evening looking at men

in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox. So here he

was on the third day of a convention which stretched out over an incredible

four days; here he was in room 217 of the Holiday Inn, his wife and

daughter at home, the TV broken, an unpleasant smell hanging around in

the bathroom. There was a swimming pool, but his eczema was so bad this

summer that he wouldn't have been caught dead in a bathing suit. From the

shins down he looked like a leper. He had an hour before the next workshop

(Helping the Vocally Challenged Child-what they meant was doing

something for kids who stuttered or who had cleft palates, but we wouldn't

want to come right out and say that, Christ no, someone might lower our

salaries), he had eaten lunch at San Remo's only restaurant, he didn't feel

like a nap, and the TV's one station was showing a rerun of Bewitched.

So he sat down with the telephone book and began to flip through it

aimlessly, hardly aware of what he was doing, wondering distantly if he

knew anyone crazy enough about either small, lovely, or seaside to live in

San Remo. He supposed this was what all the bored people in all the

Holiday Inns all over the world ended up doing-looking for a forgotten

friend or relative to call up on the phone. It was that, Bewitched, or the

Gideon Bible. And if you did happen to get hold of somebody, what the hell

did you say? 'Frank! How the hell are you? And by the way, which was it-

small, lovely, or seaside?' Sure. Right Give that man a cigar and set him on

fire.

Yet, as he lay on the bed flipping through the thin San Remo white pages

and half-scanning the columns, it seemed to him that he did know

somebody in San Remo. A book salesman? One of Sondra's nieces or

nephews, of which there were marching

battalions? A poker buddy from college? The relative of a student? That

seemed to ring a bell, but he couldn't fine it down any more tightly.

He kept thumbing, and found he was sleepy after all. He had almost

dozed off when it came to him and he sat up, wide awake again.

Lord Peter!

They were rerunning those Wimsey stories on PBS just lately-Clouds of

Witness, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors. He and Sondra were

hooked. A man named Ian Carmichael played Wimsey, and Sondra was

nuts for him. So nuts, in fact, that Ed, who didn't think Carmichael looked

like Lord Peter at all, actually became quite irritated. 'Sandy, the shape of

his face is all wrong. And he's wearing false teeth, for heaven's sake!'

'Poo,' Sondra had replied airily from the couch where she was curled up.

'You're just jealous. He's so handsome.'

'Daddy's jealous, Daddy's jealous,' little Norma sang, prancing around the

living room in her duck pyjamas.

'You should have been in bed an hour ago,' Ed told her, gazing at his

daughter with a jaundiced eye. 'And if I keep noticing you're here, I'll

probably remember that you aren't there.'

Little Norma was momentarily abashed. Ed turned back to Sondra. 'I

remember back three or four years ago. I had a kid named Todd Bowden,

and his grandfather came in for a conference. Now that guy looked like

Wimsey. A very old Wimsey, but the shape of his face was right, and -'

'Wim-zee, Wim-zee, Dim-zee, Jim-zee,' little Norma sang. ' Wim-zee,

Dim-zee, doodle-oodle-ooo-doo -'

'Shh, both of you,' Sondra said. 'I think he's the most beautiful man.'

Irritating woman! But hadn't Todd Bowden's grandfather retired to San

Remo? Sure. Todd had been one of the brightest boys in that year's ninth

grade class. Then, all at once, his grades had gone to hell. The old man had

come in, told a familiar tale of marital difficulties, and had persuaded Ed to

let the situation alone for a while and see if things didn't straighten

themselves out. Ed's view was that the old laissez-faire bit didn't work -if

you told a teenage kid to root, hog, or die, the kid usually died. But the old

man had been almost eerily persuasive (it was the resemblance to Wimsey,

perhaps), and Ed had agreed to give Todd to the end of the next Flunk Card

period. And damned if Todd hadn't pulled through. The old man must have

gone right through the whole family and really kicked some ass, Ed

thought. He looked like the type who not only could do it, but who might

derive a certain dour pleasure from it. Then, just two days ago, he had seen

Todd's picture in the paper-he had made the Southern Cal All-Stars in

baseball. No mean feat when you considered that about five hundred boys

were nominated each spring. He supposed he might never have come up

with the grandfather's name if he hadn't seen the picture. He flickered

through the white pages more purposefully now, ran his finger down a

column of fine type, and there it was. BOWDEN, VICTOR S.403 Ridge

Lane. Ed dialled the number and it rang several times at the other end. He

was just about to hang up when an old man answered. 'Hello?'

'Hello, Mr Bowden. Ed French. From Santa Donate Junior High.'

'Yes?' Politeness, but no more. Certainly no recognition. Well, the old guy

was four years further along (weren't they all!) and things undoubtedly

slipped his mind from time to time.

'Do you remember me, sir?'

'Should I?' Bowden's voice was cautious, and Ed smiled. The old man

forgot things but he didn't want anybody to know if he could help it His

own old man had been that way when his hearing started to go.

'I was your grandson Todd's guidance counsellor at S. D J. H. S. I called

to congratulate you. He sure tore up the pea-patch when he got to high

school, didn't he? And now he's All-Conference to top it off. Wow!'

'Todd!' The old man said, his voice brightening immediately. 'Yes, he

certainly did a fine job, didn't he? Second in his class! And the girl who was

ahead of him took the business courses.' A sniff of disdain in the old man's

voice. 'My son called and offered to take me to Todd's commencement, but

I'm in a wheelchair now. I broke my hip last January. I didn't want to go in a

wheelchair. But I have his graduation picture right in the hall, you bet!

Todd's made his parents very proud. And me, of course.'

'Yes, I guess we got him over the hump,' Ed said. He was smiling as he

said it, but his smile was a trifle puzzled -somehow Todd's grandfather

didn't sound the same. But it had been a long time ago, of course.

'Hump? What hump?'

"That little talk we had. When Todd was having problems with his

course-work. Back in ninth.'

'I'm not following you,' the old man said slowly. 'I would never presume

to speak for Richard's son. It would cause trouble ho-ho, you don't know

how much trouble it would cause. You've made a mistake, young fellow.'

'But-'

'Some sort of mistake. Got me confused with another student and another

grandfather, I imagine.'

Ed was moderately thunderstruck. For one of the few times in his life, he

could not think of a single thing to say. If there was confusion, it sure wasn't

on his part.

'Well,' Bowden said doubtfully, 'it was nice of you to call, Mr-'

Ed found his tongue. 'I'm right here in town, Mr Bowden. It's a

convention. Guidance counsellors. I'll be done around ten tomorrow

morning, after the final paper is read.

'Could I come around to' He consulted the phone book again. ' to

Ridge Lane and see you for a few minutes?'

'What in the world for?'

'Just curiosity, I guess. It's all water over the dam now. But about four

years ago, Todd got himself into a real crack with his grades. They were so

bad I had to send a letter home with his report-card requesting a conference

with a parent, or, ideally, with both of his parents. What I got was his

grandfather, a very pleasant man named Victor Bowden.'

'But I've already told you -'

'Yes. I know. Just the same, I talked to somebody claiming to be Todd's

grandfather. It doesn't matter much now, I suppose, but seeing is believing.

I'd only take a few minutes of your time. It's all I can take, because I'm

expected home by suppertime.'

'Time is all I have,' Bowden said, a bit ruefully. 'I'll be here all day. You're

welcome to stop in.'

Ed thanked him, said goodbye, and hung up. He sat on the end of the bed,

staring thoughtfully at the telephone. After a while he got up and took a

pack of Phillies Cheroots from the sport coat hanging on the back of the

desk chair. He ought to go; there was a workshop, and if he wasn't there, he

would be missed. He lit his

Cheroot with a Holiday Inn match and dropped the burnt stub into a

Holiday Inn ashtray. He went to the Holiday Inn window and looked

blankly out into the Holiday Inn courtyard.

It doesn't matter much now, he had told Bowden, but it mattered to him.

He wasn't used to being sold a bill of goods by one of his kids and this

unexpected news upset him.

Technically he supposed it could still turn out to be a case of an old man's

senility, but Victor Bowden hadn't sounded as if he was drooling in his

beard yet And, damn it, he didn't sound the same.

Had Todd Bowden jobbed him?

He decided it could have been done. Theoretically, at least. Especially by

a bright boy like Todd. He could have jobbed everyone, not just Ed French.

He could have forged his mother or father's name to the Flunk Cards he had

been issued during his bad patch. Lots of kids discovered a latent forging

ability when they got Flunk Cards. He could have used ink eradicator on his

second and third quarter reports, changing the grades up for his parents and

then back down again so that his home room teacher wouldn't notice

anything weird if he or she glanced at his card. The double application of

eradicator would be visible to someone who was really looking, but home

room teachers carried an average of sixty students each. They were lucky if

they could get the entire roll called before the first bell, let alone spot-

checking returned cards for tampering.

As for Todd's final class standing, it would have dipped perhaps no more

than three points overall-two bad marking periods out of a total of twelve.

His other grades had been lopsidedly good enough to make up most of the

difference. And how many parents drop by the school to look at the student

records kept by the California Department of Education? Especially the

parents of a bright student like Todd Bowden?

Frown lines appeared on Ed French's normally smooth forehead.

It doesn't matter much now. That was nothing but the truth. Todd's high

school work had been exemplary; there was no way in the world you could

fake a 94 average. The boy was going on to Berkeley, the newspaper article

had said, and Ed supposed his folks were damned proud-as they had every

right to be. More and more it seemed to Ed that there was a vicious

downside to American life, a greased skid of opportunism, cut corners, easy

drugs, easy sex, a morality that grew cloudier each year. When your kid got

through in standout style, parents had a right to be proud.

It doesn't matter now but who was his frigging grandfather?

That kept sticking into him. Who, indeed? Had Todd Bowden gone to the

local branch office of the Screen Actors' Guild and hung a notice on the

bulletin board? YOUNG MAN IN GRADES TROUBLE NEEDS OLDER

MAN, PREF. 70-80 YRS, TO GIVE BOFFO PERFORMANCE AS

GRANDFATHER, WILL PAY UNION SCALE? Uh-uh.

No way, Jose. And just what sort of adult would have fallen in with such

a crazy conspiracy, and for what reason?

Ed French, aka Pucker, aka Rubber Ed, just didn't know. And because it

didn't really matter, he stubbed out his Cheroot and went to his workshop.

But his attention kept wandering.

The next day he drove over to Ridge Lane and had a long talk with Victor

Bowden. They discussed grapes; they discussed the retail grocery business

and how the big chain stores were pushing the little guys out; they

discussed the hostage situation in Iran (that summer everyone discussed the

hostage situation in Iran); they

discussed the political climate in southern California. Mr Bowden offered

Ed a glass of wine. Ed accepted with pleasure.

He felt that he needed a glass of wine, even if it was only 10:40 in the

morning. Victor Bowden looked as much like Peter Wimsey as a machine

gun looks like a shillelagh.

Victor Bowden had no trace of the faint accent Ed remembered, and he

was quite fat. The man who had purported to be Todd's grandfather had

been whip-thin. Before leaving, Ed told him: 'I'd appreciate it if you

wouldn't mention any of this to Mr. or Mrs. Bowden. There may be a

perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it and even if there isn't, it's all

in the past.'

'Sometimes,' Bowden said, holding his glass of wine up to the sun and

admiring its rich dark colour, 'the past don't rest so easy. Why else do

people study history?' Ed smiled uneasily and said nothing.

'But don't you worry. I never meddle in Richard's affairs. And Todd is a

good boy. Salutatorian of his class he must be a good boy. Am I right?'

'As rain,' Ed French said heartily, and then asked for another glass of

wine.

Dussander's sleep was uneasy; he lay in a trench of bad dreams. They

were breaking down the fence. Thousands, perhaps millions of them. They

ran out of the Jungle and threw themselves against the electrified barbed

wire and now it was beginning to lean ominously inward. Some of the

strands had given way and now coiled uneasily on the packed earth of the

parade ground, squirting blue sparks. And still there was no end to them, no

end. The Fuehrer was as mad as Rommel had claimed If he thought now -if

he had ever thought -there could be a final solution to this problem. There

were billions of them; they filled the universe; and they were all after him.

'Old man. Wake up, old man. Dussander. Wake up, old man, wake up.' At

first he thought this was the voice of the dream.

Spoken in German; it had to be part of the dream. That was why the

voice was so terrifying, of course. If he awoke he would escape it, so he

swam upwards The man was sitting by his bed on a chair that had been

turned around backwards, a real man. 'Wake up, old man,' this visitor was

saying. He was young-no more than thirty. His eyes were dark and studious

behind plain steel-framed glasses. His brown hair was longish, collar-

length, and for a confused moment Dussander thought it was the boy in a

disguise. But this was not the boy, wearing a rather old-fashioned blue suit

much too hot for the California climate. There was a small silver pin on one

lapel of the suit. Silver, the metal you used to kill vampires and

werewolves. It was a Jewish star. 'Are you speaking to me?' Dussander

asked in German. 'Who else? Your roommate is gone.'

'Heisel? Yes. He went home yesterday.'

'Are you awake now?'

'Of course. But you've apparently mistaken me for someone else. My

name is Arthur Denker. Perhaps you have the wrong room.'

'My name is Weiskopf. And yours is Kurt Dussander.'

Dussander wanted to lick his lips but didn't. Just possibly this was still all

part of the dream- a new phase, no more. Bring me a wino and a steak-

knife, Mr. Jewish Star in the Lapel, and I'll blow you away like smoke, 'I

know no Dussander,' he told the young man. 'I don't understand you. Shall I

ring for the nurse?'

'You understand,' Weiskopf said. He shifted position slightly and brushed

a lock of hair from his forehead. The prosiness of this gesture dispelled

Dussander's last hope. 'Heisel,' Weiskopf said, and pointed at the empty

bed. 'Heisel, Dussander, Weiskopf none of these names mean anything to

me.'

'Heisei fell off a ladder while he was nailing a new gutter onto the side of

his

house,'

Weiskopf said. 'He broke his back. He may never walk again.

Unfortunate. But that was not the only tragedy of his life. He was an inmate

of Patin, where he lost his wife and daughters. Patin, which you

commanded.'

'I think you are insane,' Dussander said. 'My name is Arthur Denker. I

came to this country when my wife died. Before that I was -'

'Spare me your tale,' Weiskopf said, raising a hand. 'He has not forgotten

your face. This face.'

Weiskopf flicked a photograph into Dussander's face like a magician

doing a trick. It was one of the two the boy had shown him years ago. A

young Dussander in a jauntily cocked SS cap, swagger stick held firmly

under one arm.

Dussander spoke slowly, in English now, enunciating carefully.

'During the war I was a factory machinist. My job was to oversee the

manufacture of drive-columns and power-trains for armoured cars and

trucks. Later I helped to build Tiger tanks. My reserve unit was called up

during the battle of Berlin and I fought honorably, if briefly. After the war I

worked in the Essen Motor Works until -'

'- until it became necessary for you to run away to South America. With

your gold that had been melted down from Jewish teeth and your silver

melted down from Jewish jewellery and your numbered Swiss bank

account. Mr Heisel went home a happy man, you know. Oh, he had had a

bad moment when he woke up in the dark and realized with whom he was

sharing a room. But he feels better now. He feels that God allowed him the

sublime privilege of breaking his back so that he could be instrumental in

the capture of one of the greatest butchers of human beings to ever live.'

Dussander spoke slowly, enunciating carefully.

'During the war I was a factory machinist -'

'Oh, why not drop it? Your papers will not stand up to a serious

examination. I know it and you know it. You are found out'

'My job was to oversee the manufacture of-'

'Of corpses! One way or another, you will be in Tel Aviv before

Christmas. The authorities are cooperating with us this time, Dussander.

The Americans want to make us happy, and you are one of the things that

will make us happy.'

'- the manufacture of drive-columns and power-trains for armoured cars

and trucks. Later I helped to build Tiger tanks.'

'Why be tiresome? Why drag it out?'

'My reserve unit was called up -'

'Very well then. You'll see me again. Soon.'

Weiskopf rose. He left the room. For a moment his shadow bobbed on the

wall and then that was gone, too. Dussander closed his eyes. He wondered

if Weiskopf could be telling the truth about American cooperation. Three

years ago, when oil was tight in America, he would have believed it. But

the stupid Iranian militants had hardened American support for Israel. It

was possible. And what did it matter?

One way or the other, legal or illegal, Weiskopf and his colleagues would

have him. On the subject of Nazis they were intransigent, and on the subject

of the camps they were lunatics.

He was trembling all over. But he knew what he must do now.

The school records for the pupils who had passed through Santa Donate

Junior High were kept in an old, rambling warehouse on the north side. It

was not far from the abandoned trainyards. It was dark and echoing and it

smelled of wax and polish and 999 Industrial Cleaner-it was also the school

department's custodial warehouse.

Ed French got there around four in the afternoon with Norma in tow. A

janitor let them in, told Ed what he wanted was on the fourth floor, and

showed them to a creeping, clanking warehouse that frightened Norma into

a uncharacteristic silence.

She regained herself on the fourth floor, prancing and capering up and

down the dim aisles of stacked boxes and files while Ed searched for and

eventually found the files containing report-cards from 1975. He pulled the

second box and began to leaf through the Bs. BORK. BOSTWICK.

BOSWELL. BOWDEN, TODD. He pulled the card, shook his head

impatiently over it in the dim light, and took it across to one of the high,

dusty windows.

'Don't run around in here, honey,' he called over his shoulder.

'Why, daddy?'

'Because the trolls will get you,' he said, and held Todd's card up to the

light.

He saw it at once. This report card, in those files for four years now, had

been carefully, almost professionally, doctored.

'Jesus Christ,' Ed French muttered.

Trolls, trolls, trolls!' Norma sang gleefully, as she continued to dance up

and down the aisles.

Dussander walked carefully down the hospital corridor. He was still a bit

unsteady on his legs. He was wearing his blue bathrobe over his white

hospital johnny. It was night now, just after eight o'clock, and the nurses

were changing shifts. The next half hour would be confused-he had

observed that all the shift changes were confused. It was a time for

exchanging notes, gossip, and drinking coffee at the nurses' station, which

was just around the corner from the drinking fountain.

What he wanted was just across from the drinking fountain.

He was not noticed in the wide hallway, which at this hour reminded him

of a long and echoing train station minutes before a passenger train departs.

The walking wounded paraded slowly up and down, some dressed in robes

as he was, others holding the backs of their johnnies together. Disconnected

music came from half a dozen different transistor radios in half a dozen

different rooms. Visitors came and went A man laughed in one room and

another man seemed to be weeping across the hall. A doctor walked by with

his nose in a paperback novel.

Dussander went to the fountain, got a drink, wiped his mouth with his

cupped hand, and looked at the closed door across the hall. This door was

always locked at least, that was the theory. In practice he had observed

that it was sometimes both unlocked and unattended. Most often during the

chaotic half hour when the shifts were changing and the nurses were

gathered around the corner. Dussander had observed all of this with the

trained and wary eye of a man who has been on the jump for a long, long

time. He only wished he could observe the unmarked door for another week

or so, looking for dangerous breaks in the pattern-he would only have the

one chance. But he didn't have another week. His status as Werewolf in

Residence might not become known for another two or three days, but it

might happen tomorrow. He did not dare wait. When it came out, he would

be watched constantly.

He took another small drink, wiped his mouth again, and looked both

ways. Then, casually, with no effort of concealment, he stepped across the

hall, turned the knob, and walked into the drug closet. If the woman in

charge had happened to already be behind her desk, he was only

nearsighted Mr. Denker. So sorry, dear lady, I thought it was the WC. Stupid

of me.

But the drug closet was empty.

He ran his eye over the top shelf at his left. Nothing but eyedrops and

eardrops. Second shelf: laxatives, suppositories. On the third shelf he saw

Seconal and Veronal. He slipped a bottle of Seconals into the pocket of his

robe. Then he went back to the door and stepped out without looking

around, a puzzled smile on his face-that certainly wasn't the WC, was it?

There it was, right next to the drinking fountain. Stupid me!

He crossed to the door labelled MEN, went inside, and washed his hands.

Then he went back down the hall to the semi-private room that was now

completely private since the departure of the illustrious Mr Heisel. On the

table between the beds was a glass and a plastic pitcher filled with water.

Pity there was no bourbon; really, it was a shame. But the pills would float

him off just as nicely no matter how they were washed down.

'Morris Heisel, salud,' he said with a faint smile, and poured himself a

glass of

water.

After all those years of jumping at shadows, of seeing faces that looked

familiar on park benches or in restaurants or bus terminals, he had finally

been recognized and turned in by a man he wouldn't have known from

Adam. It was almost funny. He had barely spared Heisel two glances,

Heisel and his broken back from God. On second thought, it wasn't almost

funny; it was very funny.

He put three pills in his mouth, swallowed them with water, took three

more, then three more. In the room across the hall he could see two old men

hunched over a night-table, playing a grumpy game of cribbage. One of

them had a hernia, Dussander knew. What was the other? Gallstones?

Kidney stones? Tumour? Prostate? The horrors of old age.

They were legion.

He refilled his water glass but didn't take any more pills right away. Too

many could defeat his purpose. He might throw them up and they would

pump the residue out of his stomach, saving him for whatever indignities

the Americans and the Israelis could devise.

He had no intention of trying to take his life stupidly, like a hausfrau on a

crying jag.

When he began to get drowsy, he would take a few more. That would be

fine.

The quavering voice of one of the cribbage players came to him, thin and

triumphant: 'A double run of four for ten fifteens for eighteen and the

right jack for nineteen. How do you like those apples?'

'Don't worry,' the old man with the hernia said confidently. 'I got first

count. I'll peg out.'

Peg out, Dussander thought, sleepy now. An apt enough phrase-but the

Americans had a turn for idiom. I don't give a tin shit, get hip or get out,

stick it where the sun don't shine, money talks, nobody walks. Wonderful

idiom.

They thought they had him, but he was going to peg out before their very

eyes.

He found himself wishing, of all absurd things, that he could leave a note

for the boy.

Wishing he could tell him to be very careful. To listen to an old man who

had finally overstepped himself. He wished he could tell the boy that in the

end he, Dussander, had come to respect him, even if he could never like

him, and that talking to him had been better than listening to the run of his

own thoughts. But any note, no matter how innocent, might cast suspicion

on the boy, and Dussander did not want that. Oh, he would have a bad

month or two, waiting for some government agent to show up and question

him about a certain document that had been found in a safety deposit box

rented to Kurt Dussander, aka Arthur Denker but after a time, the boy

would come to believe he had been telling the truth. There was no need for

the boy to be touched by any of this, as long as he kept his head.

Dussander reached out with a hand that seemed to stretch for miles, got

the glass of water, and took another three pills. He put the glass back, closed

his eyes, and settled deeper into his soft, soft pillow. He had never felt so

much like sleeping, and his sleep would be long. It would be restful. Unless

there were dreams.

The thought shocked him. Dreams? Please God, no. Not those dreams.

Not for eternity, not with all possibility of awakening gone. Not-In sudden

terror, he tried to struggle awake. It seemed that hands were reaching

eagerly up out of the bed to grab htm, thin hands with hungry fingers. (!

NO!)

His thoughts broke up in a steepening spiral of darkness, and he rode

down that spiral as if down a greased slide, down and down, to whatever

dreams there are. His overdose was discovered at 1.35 a. m., and he was

pronounced dead fifteen minutes later. The nurse on duty was young and

had been susceptible to elderly Mr. Denker's slightly ironic courtliness. She

burst into tears. She was a Catholic, and she could not understand why such

a sweet old man, who had been getting better, would want to do such a

thing and damn his immortal soul to hell.

On Saturday morning in the Bowden household, nobody got up until at

least nine. This morning at 9.30, Todd and his father were reading at the

table and Monica, who was a slow waker, served them scrambled eggs,

juice, and coffee without speaking, still half in her dreams. Todd was

reading a paperback science fiction novel and Dick was absorbed in

Architectural Digest when the paper slapped against the door. 'Want me to

get it, dad?'

'I will.'

Dick brought it in, started to sip his coffee, and then choked on it as he

got a look at the front page.

'Dick, what's wrong?' Monica asked, hurrying towards him.

Dick coughed out coffee that had gone down the wrong pipe, and while

Todd looked at him over the top of his paperback in mild wonder, Monica

started to pound him on the back. On the third stroke, her eyes fell to the

paper's headline and she stopped in mid-stroke, as if playing statues. Her

eyes widened until it seemed they might actually fail onto the table.

'Holy God up in heaven!' Dick Bowden managed in a choked voice. 'Isn't

that I can't believe' Monica began, and then stopped. She looked at Todd.

'Oh, honey -'

His father was looking at him, too.

Alarmed now, Todd came around the table. 'What's the matter?'

'Mr Denker,' Dick said-it was all he could manage. Todd read the

headline and understood everything. In dark letters it read: FUGITIVE

NAZI COMMITS SUICIDE IN SANTA DONATO HOSPITAL. Below

were two photos, side by side. Todd had seen both of them before. One

showed Arthur Denker, six years younger and spryer. Todd knew it had

been taken by a hippie street photographer, and that the old man had bought

it only to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands by chance. The other

photo showed an SS officer named Kurt Dussander, swagger-stick cocked

jauntily (arrogantly, some might have said) under one arm, his cap cocked

to one side.

If they had the photograph the hippie had taken, they had been in his

house.

Todd skimmed the article, his mind whizzing frantically. No mention of

the winos. But the bodies would be found, and when they were, it would be

a worldwide story. PATIN COMMANDANT NEVER LOST HIS TOUCH,

HORROR IN NAZI'S BASEMENT.

HE NEVER STOPPED KILLING.

Todd Bowden swayed on his feet

Far away, echoing, he heard his mother cry sharply: 'Catch him, Dick!

He's fainting!'

The word (faintingfaintingfainting) repeated itself over and over. He

dimly felt his father's arm grab him, and then for a little while Todd felt

nothing, heard nothing at all.

Ed French was eating a Danish when he unfolded the paper. He coughed,

made a strange gagging sound, and spat dismembered pastry all over the

table.

'Eddie!' Sondra French said with some alarm. 'Are you okay?'

'Daddy's chokin', daddy's chokin',' little Norma proclaimed with nervous

good humour, and then happily joined her mother in slamming Ed on the

back. Ed barely felt the blows.

He was still goggling down at the newspaper.

'What's wrong, Eddie?' Sondra asked again.

'Him! Him!' Ed shouted, stabbing his finger down at the paper so hard

that his fingernail tore all the way through the A section. That man! Lord

Peter!'

'What in God's name are you t -'

'That's Todd Bowden's grandfather!'

'What? That war criminal? Eddie, that's crazy!'

'But it's him,' Ed almost moaned. 'Jesus Christ Almighty, that's him!'

Sondra French looked at the picture long and fixedly.

'He doesn't look like Peter Wimsey at all,' she said finally.

Todd, pale as window-glass, sat on a couch between his mother and

father.

Opposite them was a greying, polite police detective named Richler.

Todd's father had offered to call the police, but Todd had done it himself,

his voice cracking through the registers as it had done when he was

fourteen.

He finished his recital. It hadn't taken long. He spoke with a mechanical

colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen,

true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar

him forever.

'I read him oh, I don't know. Tom Jones. The Mill on the Floss. That

was a boring one.

I didn't think we'd ever get through it. Some stories by Hawthorne-I

remember he especially liked "The Great Stone Face" and "Young

Goodman Brown". We started The Pickwick Papers, but he didn't like it. He

said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious, and Pickwick

was only kittenish. That was his word, kittenish. We got along the best with

Tom Jones. We both liked that one.'

'And that was four years ago,' Richler said.

'Yes. I kept stopping in to see him when I got the chance, but in high

school we were bussed across town and some of 'the kids got up a scratch

ball team there was more homework you know things just came up.'

'You had less time.'

'Less time, that's right. The work in high school was a lot harder making

the grades to get into college.'

'But Todd is a very apt pupil,' Monica said almost automatically. 'He

graduated salutatorian. We were so proud.'

'I'll bet you were,' Richler said with a warm smile. 'I've got two boys in

Fairview, down in the valley, and they're just about able to keep their sports

eligibility.' He turned back to Todd. 'You didn't read him any more books

after you started high school?'

'No. Once in a while I'd read him the paper. I'd come over and he'd ask

me what the headlines were. He was interested in Watergate when that was

going on. And he always wanted to know about the stock market, and the

print on that page used to drive him batshit-sorry, Mom.'

She patted his hand.

'I don't know why he was interested in the stocks, but he was.'

'He had a few stocks,' Richler said. 'That's how he was getting by. You

want to hear a really crazy coincidence? The man who made the

investments for him was convicted on a murder charge in the late forties.

Dussander had five different sets of ID salted around that house. He was a

cagey one, all right'

'I suppose he kept the stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere,' Todd

remarked.

'Pardon me?' Richler raised his eyebrows.

'His stocks,' Todd said. His father, who had also looked puzzled, now

nodded at Richler.

'His stock certificates were in a footlocker under his bed,' Richler said,

'along with that photo of him as Denker. Did he have a safety deposit box,

son? Did he ever say he did?'

Todd thought, and then shook his head. 'I just thought that was where you

kept your stocks. I don't know. This this whole thing has just you know

it blows my wheels.'

He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly real. He really was

dazed. Yet, little by little, he felt his instincts of self-preservation surfacing.

He felt a growing alertness, and the first stirrings of confidence. If

Dussander had really taken a safety deposit box in which to store his

insurance document, wouldn't he have transferred his stock certificates

there? And that photograph?

'We're working with the Israelis on this,' Richler said. 'In a very unofficial

way. I'd be grateful if you didn't mention that if you decide to see any press

people. They're real professionals. There's a man named Weiskopf who'd

like to talk to you tomorrow, Todd.

If that's okay by you and your folks.'

'I guess so,' Todd said, but he felt a touch of atavistic dread at the thought

of being sniffed over by the same hounds that had chased Dussander for the

last third of his life.

Dussander had had a healthy respect for them, and Todd knew he would

do well to keep that in mind.

'Mr and Mrs Bowden? Do you have any objections to Todd seeing Mr

Weiskopf?'

'Not if Todd doesn't,' Dick Bowden said. 'I'd like to be present, though.

I've read about these Mossad characters -'

'Weiskopf isn't Mossad. He's what the Israelis call a special operative. In

fact, he teaches Yiddish grammar-if you can believe that-and English

Literature. Also, he's written two novels.' Richler smiled.

Dick raised a hand, dismissing it 'Whatever he is, I'm not going to let him

badger Todd.

From what I've read, these fellows can be a little too professional. Maybe

he's okay. But I want you and this Weiskopf to remember that Todd tried to

help that old man. He was flying under false colours, but Todd didn't know

that.'

'That's okay, dad,' Todd said with a wan smile.

'I just want you to help us all that you can,' Richler said. 'I appreciate

your concern, Mr Bowden. I think you're going to find that Weiskopf is a

pleasant, low-pressure kind of guy. I've finished my own questions, but I'll

break a little ground by telling you what the Israelis are most interested in.

Todd was with Dussander when he had the heart attack that landed him in

the hospital -'

'He asked me to come over and read him a letter,' Todd said.

'We know.' Richler leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tie swinging out

to form a plumb-line to the floor. "The Israelis want to know about that

letter. Dussander was a big fish, but he wasn't the last one in the lake-or so

Sam Weiskopf says, and I believe him.

They think Dussander might have known about a lot of the other fish.

Most of those still alive are probably in South America, but there may be

others in a dozen

countries including the United States. Did you know they collared a

man who had been an Unterkommandant at Buchenwald in the lobby of a

Tel Aviv hotel?'

'Really!' Monica said, her eyes widening.

'Really,' Richler nodded. 'Two years ago. The point is just that the Israelis

think the letter Dussander wanted Todd to read might have been from one

of those other fish. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. Either way,

they want to know.'

Todd, who had gone back to Dussander's house and burned the letter,

said: I'd help you-or this Weiskopf-if I could, Lieutenant Richler, but the

letter was in German. It was really tough to read. I felt like a fool. Mr

Denker Dussander kept getting more excited and asking me to spell the

words he couldn't understand because of my, you know, pronunciation. But

I guess he was following all right. I remember once he laughed and said,

"Yes, yes, that is what you'd do, isn't it?" Then he said something in

German.

This was about two or three minutes before he had the heart attack.

Something about Dummkop. That means stupid in German, I think.'

He was looking at Richler uncertainly, inwardly quite pleased with this

lie.

Richler was nodding. 'Yes, we can understand that the letter was in

German. The admitting doctor heard the story from you and corroborated it.

But the letter itself, Todd do you remember what happened to it?'

Here it is, Todd thought. The crunch.

'I guess it was still on the table when the ambulance came. When we all

left. I couldn't testify to it in court, but -'

'I think there was a letter on the table,' Dick said. 'I picked something up

and glanced at it Airmail stationery, I think, but I didn't notice it was written

in German.'

Then it should still be there,' Richler said. That's what we can't figure out'

'It's not?' Dick said. 'I mean, it wasn't?'

'It wasn't and it isn't'

'Maybe somebody broke in,' Monica suggested.

"There would have been no need to break in,' Richler said. 'In the

confusion of getting him out, the house was never locked. Dussander

himself never thought to ask someone to lock up, apparently. His latchkey

was still in the pocket of his pants when he died. His house was unlocked

from the time the MED-Q attendants wheeled him out until we sealed it this

morning at 2:30 a. m.'

'Well, there you are,' Dick said.

'No,' Todd said. 'I see what's bugging Lieutenant Richler.' Oh yes, he saw

it very well.

You'd have to be blind to miss it 'Why would a burglar steal nothing but a

letter?

Especially one written in German? It doesn't listen. Mr. Denker didn't

have much to steal, but a guy who broke in could find something better than

that'

'You've got it, all right,' Richler said. 'Not bad.'

'Todd used to want to be a detective when he grew up,' Monica said, and

ruffled Todd's hair a bit. Since he had gotten big he seemed to object to that,

but right now he didn't seem to mind. God, she hated to see him looking so

pale. 'I guess he's changed his mind to history these days.'

'History is a good field,' Richler said. 'You can be an investigative

historian. Have you ever read Josephine Tey?'

'No, sir.'

'Doesn't matter. I just wish my boys had some ambition greater than

seeing the Angels win the pennant this year.'

Todd offered a wan smile and said nothing.

Richler turned serious again. 'Anyway, I'll tell you the theory we're going

on. We figure that someone, probably right here in Santa Donate, knew who

and what Dussander was.'

'Really?' Dick said.

'Oh yes. Someone who knew the truth. Maybe another fugitive Nazi. I

know that sounds like Robert Ludlum stuff, but who would have thought

there was even one fugitive Nazi in a quiet little suburb like this? And when

Dussander was taken to the hospital, we think that Mr. X scooted over to

the house and got that incriminating letter. And that by now it's so many

decomposing ashes floating around in the sewer system.'

'That doesn't make much sense either,' Todd said.

'Why not, Todd?'

'Well, if Mr Denk if Dussander had an old buddy from the camps, or

just an old Nazi buddy, why did he bother to have me come over and read

him that letter? I mean, if you could have heard him correcting me, and

stuff at least this old Nazi buddy you're talking about would know how to

speak German.'

'A good point. Except maybe this other fellow is in a wheelchair, or

blind. For all we know, it might be Hermann himself and he doesn't even

dare go out and show his face.'

'Guys that are blind or in wheelchairs aren't that good at scooting out to

get letters,' Todd said.

Richler looked admiring again. 'True. But a blind man could steal a letter

even if he couldn't read it, though. Or hire it done.'

Todd thought this over, and nodded-but he shrugged at the same time to

show how farfetched he thought the idea. Richler had progressed far

beyond Robert Ludlum and into the land of Sax Rohmer. But how

farfetched the idea was or wasn't didn't matter one fucking little bit, did it?

No, what mattered was that Richler was still sniffing around and that

sheeny, Weiskopf, was also sniffing around. The letter, the goddam letter! If

only he hadn't been forced to make something up on the spur of the moment

like that!

And suddenly he was thinking of his.30-.30, cased and resting on its shelf

in the cool, dark garage. He pulled his mind away from it quickly. The

palms of his hands had gone damp.

'Did Dussander have any friends that you knew of?' Richler was asking.

'Friends? No. There used to be a cleaning lady, but she moved away and

he didn't bother to get another one. In the summer he hired a kid to mow his

lawn, but I don't think he'd gotten one this year. The grass is pretty long,

isn't it?'

'Yes. We've knocked on a lot of doors, and it doesn't seem as if he'd hired

anyone. Did he get phone-calls?'

'Sure,' Todd said off-handedly-here was a gleam of light, a possible

escape-hatch that was relatively safe. Dussander's phone had actually rung

only half a dozen tunes or so in all the time Todd had known him-salesmen,

a polling organization asking about breakfast foods, the rest wrong

numbers. He only had the phone in case he got sick as he finally had,

might his soul rot in hell. 'He used to get a call or two every week.'

'Did he speak German on those occasions?' Richler asked quickly. He

seemed

excited.

'No,' Todd said, suddenly cautious. He didn't like Richler's excitement-

there was something wrong about it, something dangerous. He felt sure of

it, and suddenly

Todd had to work furiously to keep himself from breaking a sweat. 'He

didn't talk much at all. I remember that a couple of times he said things like,

"The boy who reads to me is here right now. I'll call you back."'

'I'll bet that's it!' Richler said, whacking his palms on his thighs. 'I'd bet

two weeks' pay that was the guy!' He closed his notebook with a snap (so

far as Todd could see he had done nothing but doodle in it) and stood up. 'I

want to thank all three of you for your time. You in particular, Todd. I know

all of this has been a hell of a shock to you, but it will be over soon. We're

going to turn the house upside down this afternoon-cellar to attic and then

back down to the cellar again. We're bringing in all the special teams. We

may find some trace of Dussander's phonemate yet.'

'I hope so,' Todd said.

Richler shook hands all around and left. Dick asked Todd if he felt like

going out back and hitting the badminton birdie around until lunch. Todd

said he didn't feel much like badminton or lunch, and went upstairs with his

head down and his shoulders slumped.

His parents exchanged sympathetic, troubled glances. Todd lay down on

his bed, stared at the ceiling, and thought about his.30-.30. He could see it

very clearly in his mind's eye.

He thought about shoving the blue steel barrel right up Betty Trask's

slimy Jewish cooze -just what she needed, a prick that never went soft. How

do you like it, Betty? He heard himself asking her, You just tell me if you

get enough, okay? He imagined her screams.

And at last a terrible flat smile came to his face. Sure, just tell me, you

bitch

okay?

Okay? Okay?

'So what do you think?' Weiskopf asked Richler when Richler picked him

up at a luncheonette three blocks from the Bowden home.

'Oh, I think the kid was in on it somehow,' Richler said. 'Somehow, some

way, to some degree. But is he cool? If you poured hot water into his mouth

I think he'd spit out icecubes. I tripped him up a couple of times, but I've got

nothing I could use in court. And if I'd gone much further, some smart

lawyer might be able to get him off on entrapment a year or two down the

road even if something does pull together. I mean, he's still a juvenile.

Technically, at least in some ways, I'd guess he hasn't really been a juvenile

since he was maybe eight. He's creepy, man.' Richler stuck a cigarette in his

mouth and laughed-the laugh had a shaky sound. 'I mean, really fuckin'

creepy.'

'What slips did he make?'

'The phone calls. That's the main thing. When I slipped him the idea, I

could see his eyes light up like a pinball machine.' Richler turned left and

wheeled the nondescript Chevy Nova down the freeway entrance ramp.

Two hundred yards to their right was the slope and the dead tree where

Todd had dry-fired his rifle at the freeway traffic one Saturday morning not

long ago.

'He's saying to himself, "This cop is off the wall if he thinks Dussander

had a Nazi friend here in town, but if he does think that, it takes me off

ground-zero." So he says yeah, Dussander got one or two calls a week. Very

mysterious. "I can't talk now, Z-5, call later"-that type of thing. But

Dussander's been getting a special "quiet phone" rate for the last seven

years. Almost no activity at all, and no long distance. He wasn't getting a

call or two a week.'

'What else?'

'He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the letter had been stolen

and nothing else. He knew that was the only thing missing because he was

the one who went back and took it.'

Richler jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

'We think the letter was just a prop. We think that Dussander had the

heart attack while he was trying to bury that body the freshest body. There

was dirt on his shoes and his cuffs, and it was fresh, so that's a pretty fair

assumption. That means he called the kid after he had the heart attack, not

before. He crawls upstairs and phones the kid. The kid flips out-as much as

he ever flips out, anyway -and cooks up the letter story on the spur of the

moment. It's not great, but not that bad, either considering the

circumstances. He goes over there and cleans up Dussander's mess for him.

Now the kid is in fucking overdrive. MED-Q's coming, his father is

coming, and he needs that letter for stage-dressing. He goes upstairs and

breaks open that box -'

'You've got confirmation on that?' Weiskopf asked, lighting a cigarette of

his own. It was an unfiltered Player, and to Richler it smelted like horseshit

No wonder the British Empire fell, he thought, if they started smoking

cigarettes like that. 'Yes, we've got confirmation right up the ying-yang,'

Richler said. 'There are fingerprints on the box which match those in his

school records. But his fingerprints are on almost everything in the goddam

house!'

'Still, if you confront him with all of that, you can rattle him,' Weiskopf

said. 'Oh, listen, hey, you don't know this kid. When I said he was cool, I

meant it. He'd say Dussander asked him to fetch the box once or twice so he

could put something in it or take something out of it'

'His fingerprints are on the shovel.'

'He'd say he used it to plant a rose-bush in the back yard.' Richler took

out his cigarettes but the pack was empty. Weiskopf offered him a Player.

Richler took one puff and began coughing. 'They taste as bad as they smell,'

he choked.

'Like those hamburgers we had for lunch yesterday,' Weiskopf said,

smiling. 'Those Mac-Burgers.'

'Big Macs,' Richler said, and laughed. 'Okay. So cross-cultural pollination

doesn't always work.' His smile faded. 'He looks so clean-cut, you know?

'Yes.'

'This is no jd from Vasco with hair down to his asshole and chains on his

motorcycle boots.'

'No.' Weiskopf stared at the traffic all around them and was very glad he

wasn't driving.

'He's just a boy. A white boy from a good home. And I find it difficult to

believe that -'

'I thought you had them ready to handle rifles and grenades by the time

they were eighteen. In Israel.'

'Yes. But he was fourteen when all of this started. Why should a fourteen-

year-old-boy mix himself up with such a man as Dussander? I have tried

and tried to understand that and still I can't.'

'I'd settle for how,' Richler said, and flicked the cigarette out the window.

It was giving him a headache.

'Perhaps, if it did happen, it was just luck. A coincidence. There is a word

I like very much, Lieutenant Richler -serendipity. I think there is black

serendipity as well as white.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Richler said gloomily. 'All I

know is the kid is creepier than a bug under a rock.'

'What I'm saying is simple. Any other boy would have been more than

happy to tell his parents, or the police. To say, "I have recognized a wanted

man. He is living at this address. Yes, I am sure." And then let the

authorities take over. Or do you feel I am wrong?'

'No, I wouldn't say so. The kid would be in the limelight for a few days.

Most kids would dig that. Picture in the paper, an interview on the evening

news, probably a school assembly award for good citizenship.' Richler

laughed. 'Hell, the kid would probably get a shot on Real People.'

'What's that?'

'Never mind,' Richler said. He had to raise his voice slightly because a

ten-wheeler was passing the Nova on either side. Weiskopf looked

nervously from one to the other. 'You don't want to know. But you're right

about most kids. Most kids.'

'But not this kid,' Weiskopf said. 'This boy, probably by dumb luck alone,

penetrates Dussander's cover. Yet instead of going to his parents or the

authorities he goes to Dussander. Why? You say you don't care, but I think

you do. I think it haunts you just as it does me.'

'Not blackmail,' Richler said. 'That's for sure. That kid's got everything a

kid could want There was even a dune-buggy in the garage, not to mention

an elephant gun on the wall.

And even if he wanted to squeeze Dussander just for the thrill of it,

Dussander was practically unsqueezable. Except for those few stocks, he

didn't have a pot to piss in.'

'How sure are you that the boy doesn't know you've found the bodies?'

'I'm sure. Maybe I'll go back this afternoon and hit him with that. Right

now it looks like our best shot.' Richler struck the steering wheel lightly. 'If

all of this had come out even one day sooner, I think I would have tried for

a search warrant.'

'The clothes the boy was wearing that night?'

'Yeah. If we could have found soil samples on his clothes that matched

the dirt in Dussander's cellar, I almost think we could break him. But the

clothes he was wearing that night have probably been washed six times

since them.'

'What about the other dead winos? The ones your police department has

been finding around the city?'

"Those belong to Dan Bozeman. I don't think there's any connection

anyhow. Dussander just wasn't that strong and more to the point, he had

such a neat little racket already worked out. Promise them a drink and a

meal, take them home on the city bus-the fucking city bus!-and waste them

right in his kitchen.' Weiskopf said quietly: 'It wasn't Dussander I was

thinking of.'

'What do you mean by th -' Richler began, and then his mouth snapped

suddenly closed. There was a long, unbelieving moment of silence, broken

only by the drone of the traffic all around them. Then Richler said softly:

'Hey. Hey, come on now. Give me a fucking br -'

'As an agent of my government, I am only interested in Bowden because

of what, if anything, he may know about Dussander's remaining contacts

with the Nazi underground. But as a human being, I am becoming more and

more interested in the boy himself. I'd like to know what makes him tick. I

want to know why. And as I try to answer that question to my own

satisfaction, I find that more and more I am asking myself What else.'

'But-'

'Do you suppose, I ask myself, that the very atrocities in which

Dussander took part formed the basis of some attraction between them?

That's an unholy idea, I

tell myself. The things that happened in those camps still have power

enough to make the stomach flutter with nausea. I feel that way myself,

although the only close relative I ever had in the camps was my grandfather,

and he died when I was three. But maybe for all of us there is something

about what the Germans did that pleases and excites us-something that

opens the catacombs of the imagination. Maybe part of our dread and horror

comes from a secret knowledge that under the right-or wrong-set of

circumstances, we ourselves would be willing to build such places and staff

them. Black serendipity. Maybe we know that under the right set of

circumstances the things that live in the catacombs would be glad to crawl

out And what do you think they would look like? Like mad fuehrers with

forelocks and shoe-polish moustaches, heiling all over the place? Like red

devils, or demons, or the dragon that floats on its stinking reptile wings?'

'I don't know,' Richler said.

'I think most of them would look like ordinary accountants,' Weiskopf

said. 'Little mind-men with graphs and flow-charts and electronic

calculators, all ready to start maximizing the kill ratios so that next time we

could perhaps kill twenty or thirty millions instead of only seven or eight or

twelve. And some of them might look like Todd Bowden.'

'You're damn near as creepy as he is,' Richler said.

Weiskopf nodded. 'It's a creepy subject Finding those dead men and

animals in Dussander's cellar that was creepy, no? Have you ever thought

that maybe this boy began with a simple interest in the camps? An interest

not much different from the interests of boys who collect coins or stamps or

who like to read about wild West desperados? And that he went to

Dussander to get his information straight from the horse's head?'

'Mouth,' Weiskopf muttered. It was almost lost in the roar of another ten-

wheeler passing them. BUDWEISER was printed on the side in letters six

feet tall. What an amazing country, Weiskopf thought and lit a fresh

cigarette. They don't understand how we can live surrounded by half-mad

Arabs, but if I lived here for two years I would have a nervous breakdown.

'Maybe. And maybe it isn't possible to stand close to murder piled on

murder and not be touched by it.'

The short guy who entered the squadroom brought stench after him like a

wake. He smelted like rotten bananas and Wildroot Cream Oil and

cockroach shit and the inside of a city garbage truck at the end of a busy

morning. He was dressed in a pair of ageing herringbone pants, a ripped

grey institutional shirt, and a faded blue warmup jacket from which most of

the zipper hung loose like a string of pygmy teeth. The uppers of his shoes

were bound to the lowers with Krazy Glue. A pestiferous hat sat on his

head. He looked like death with a hangover.

'Oh Christ, get out of here!' The duty sergeant cried. 'You're not under

arrest, Hap! I swear to God! I swear it on my mother's name! Get out of

here! I want to breathe again.'

'I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman.'

'He died, Hap. It happened yesterday. We're all really fucked up over it.

So get out and let us mourn in peace.'

'I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman!' Hap said more loudly. His breath

drifted fragrantly from his mouth: a juicy, fermenting mixture of pizza,

Hall's Mentholyptus lozenges, and sweet red wine.

'He had to go to Siam on a case, Hap. So why don't you just get out of

here? Go someplace and eat a lightbulb.'

'I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman and I ain't leaving until I do!'

The duty sergeant fled the room. He returned about five minutes later

with Bozeman, a thin, slightly stooped man of fifty.

'Take him into your office, okay, Dan?' The duty sergeant begged. 'Won't

that be all right?'

'Come on, Hap,' Bozeman said, and a minute later they were in the three-

sided stall that was Bozeman's office. Bozeman prudently opened his only

window and turned on his fan before sitting down. 'Do something for you,

Hap?'

'You still on those murders, Lieutenant Bozeman?'

'The derelicts? Yeah, I guess that's still mine.'

'Well, I know who greased 'em.'

'Is that so, Hap?' Bozeman asked. He was busy lighting his pipe. He

rarely smoked the pipe, but neither the fan nor the open window was quite

enough to overwhelm Hap's smell. Soon, Bozeman thought, the paint would

begin to blister and peel. He sighed.

'You member I tole you Sonny was talking to a guy just a day before they

found him all cut up in that pipe? You member me tellin' you that,

Lieutenant Bozeman?'

'I remember.' Several of the winos who hung around the Salvation Army

and the soup kitchen a few blocks away had told a similar story about two

of the murdered derelicts, Charles 'Sonny' Brackett and Peter 'Poley' Smith.

They had seen a guy hanging around, a young guy, talking to Sonny and

Poley. Nobody knew for sure if Sonny had gone off with the guy, but Hap

and two others claimed to have seen Poley Smith walk off with him. They

had the idea that the 'guy' was underage and willing to spring for a bottle of

musky in exchange for some juice. Several other winos claimed to have

seen a 'guy' like that around. The description of this 'guy' was superb, bound

to stand up in court, coming as it did from such unimpeachable sources.

Young, blond, and white. What else did you need to make a bust?

'Well, last night I was in the park,' Hap said, 'and I just happened to have

this old bunch of newspapers -'

'There's a law against vagrancy in this city, Hap.'

'I was just collectin 'em up,' Hap said righteously. 'It's so awful the way

people litter. I was doin' a public surface, Lieutenant A friggin' public

surface. Some of those papers was a week old.'

'Yes. Hap.' Bozeman said. He remembered-vaguely being quite hungry

and looking forward keenly to his lunch. That time seemed long ago now.

'Well, when I woke up, one of those papers had blew onto my face and I

was looking right at the guy. Gave me a hell of a jump, I can tell you. Look.

This is the guy. This guy right here.'

Hap pulled a crumpled, yellowed, water-spotted sheet of newspaper from

his warmup jacket and unfolded it Bozeman leaned forward, now

moderately interested. Hap put the paper on his desk so he could read the

headline: 4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS. Below

the head were four photos.

'Which one, Hap?'

Hap put a grimy finger on the picture to the far right 'Him. It says his

name is Todd Bowden.'

Bozeman looked from the picture to Hap, wondering how many of Hap's

brain-cells were still unfried and in some kind of working order after twenty

years of being sauteed in a bubbling sauce of cheap wine seasoned with an

occasional shot of sterno.

'How can you be sure, Hap? He's wearing a baseball cap in the picture. I

can't tell if he's got blond hair or not'

'The grin,' Hap said. 'It's the way he's grinnin'. He was grinnin' at Poley in

just that same ain't-life-grand way when they walked off together. I couldn't

mistake that grin in a million years. That's him, that's the guy.'

Bozeman barely heard this last; he was thinking, and thinking hard. Todd

Bowden. There was something familiar about that name. Something that

bothered him even worse than the thought that a local high school hero

might be going around and offing winos. He thought he had heard that

name just this morning in conversation. He frowned, trying to remember

where.

Hap was gone and Dan Bozeman was still trying to figure it out when

Richler and Weiskopf came in and it was the sound of their voices as they

got coffee in the squadroom that finally brought it home to him.

'Holy God,' said Lieutenant Bozeman, and got up in a hurry.

Both of his parents had offered to cancel their afternoon plans-Monica at

the market and Dick golfing with some business people-and stay home with

him, but Todd told them he would rather be alone. He thought he would

clean his rifle and just sort of think the whole thing over. Try to get it

straight in his mind.

'Todd,' Dick said, and suddenly found he had nothing much to say. He

supposed if he had been his own father, he would have at this point advised

prayer. But the generations had turned, and the Bowdens weren't much into

that these days. 'Sometimes these things happen,' he finished lamely,

because Todd was still looking at him. 'Try not to brood about it.'

'I'll be all right.' Todd said.

After they were gone, he took some rags and a bottle of Alpaca gun oil

out onto the bench beside the roses. He went back into the garage and got

the.30-30. He took it to the bench and broke it down, the dusty-sweet smell

of the flowers lingering pleasantly in his nose. He cleaned the gun

thoroughly, humming a tune as he did it, sometimes whistling a snatch

between his teeth. Then he put the gun together again. He could have done

it just as easily in the dark. His mind wandered free. When it came back

some five minutes later, he observed that he had loaded the gun. The idea of

target shooting didn't much appeal, not today, but he had still loaded it. He

told himself he didn't know why.

Sure you do, Todd-baby. The time, so to speak, has come.

And that was when the shiny yellow Saab turned into the driveway. The

man who got out was vaguely familiar to Todd, but it wasn't until he

slammed the car door and started to walk towards him that Todd saw the

sneakers-low-topped Keds, light blue. Talk about Blasts from the Past; here,

walking up the Bowden driveway, was Rubber Ed French, the Ked Man.

'Hi, Todd. Long time no see.'

Todd leaned the rifle against the side of the bench and offered his wide

and winsome grin. 'Hi, Mr. French. What are you doing out here on the wild

side of town?'

'Are your folks home?'

'Gee, no. Did you want them for something?'

'No,' Ed French said after a long, thoughtful pause. 'No, I guess not I

guess maybe it would be better if just you and I talked. For starters, anyway.

You may be able to offer a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.

Although God knows I doubt it.'

He reached into his hip pocket and brought out a newsclipping. Todd

knew what it was even before Rubber Ed passed it to him, and for the

second time that day he was looking at the side-by-side pictures of

Dussander. The one the street-photographer had taken had been circled in

black ink. The meaning was clear enough to Todd; French had recognized

Todd's 'grandfather'. And now he wanted to tell everyone in the world all

about it. He wanted to midwife the good news. Good old Rubber Ed, with

his jive talk and his motherfucking sneakers.

The police would be very interested-but, of course, they already were. He

knew that now. The sinking feeling had begun about thirty minutes after

Richler left. It was as if he had been riding high in a balloon filled with

happy-gas. Then a cold steel arrow had ripped through the balloon's fabric,

and now it was sinking steadily.

The phone calls, that was the biggie. Fucking Richler had trotted that out

just as slick as warm owlshit. Sure, he had said, practically breaking his

neck to rush into the trap. He gets one or two calls a week. Let them go

ranting all over southern California looking for geriatric ex-Nazis. Fine.

Except maybe they had gotten a different story from Ma Bell.

Todd didn't know if the phone company could tell how much you used

your phone for local calls but there had been a look in Richler's eyes

Then there was the letter. He had inadvertently told Richler that the house

hadn't been burgled, and Richler had no doubt gone away thinking that the

only way Todd could have known that was if he had been back as he had

been, not just once but three times, first to get the letter and twice more

looking for anything incriminating. There had been nothing; even the

Gestapo uniform was gone, disposed of by Dussander sometime during the

last four years.

And then there were the bodies. Richler had never mentioned the bodies.

At first Todd had thought that was good. Let them hunt a little longer

while he got his own head-not to mention his story-straight. No fear about

the dirt that had gotten on his clothes burying the body; they had all been

cleaned later that same night. He ran them through the washer-dryer

himself, perfectly aware that Dussander might die and then everything

might come out. You can't be too careful, boy, as Dussander himself would

have said.

Then, little by little, he had realized it was not good. The weather had

been warm, and the warm weather always made the cellar smell worse; on

his last trip to Dussander's house it had been a rank presence. Surely the

police would have been interested in that smell, and would have tracked it

to its source. So why had Richler withheld the information? Was he saving

it for later? Saving it for a nasty little surprise? And if Richler was into

planning nasty little surprises, it could mean that he

suspected.

Todd looked up from the clipping and saw that Rubber Ed had half

turned away from him. He was looking into the street, although not much

was happening out there. Richler could suspect, but suspicion was the best

he could do.

Unless there was some sort of concrete evidence binding Todd to the old

man.

Exactly the sort of evidence Rubber Ed French could give.

Ridiculous man in a pair of ridiculous sneakers. Such a ridiculous man

hardly deserved to live. Todd touched the barrel of the.30-.30.

Yes, Rubber Ed was the link they didn't have. They could never prove

that Todd had been an accessory to one of Dussander's murders. But with

Rubber Ed's testimony they could prove conspiracy. And would even that

end it? Oh, no. They would get his high school graduation picture next and

start showing it to the stewbums down in the Mission district. A long shot,

but one Richler could ill afford not to play. If we can't pin one bunch of

winos on him, maybe we can get him for the other bunch.

What next? Court next.

His father would get him a wonderful bunch of lawyers, of course. And

the lawyers would get him off, of course. Too much circumstantial

evidence. He would make too favourable an impression on the jury. But by

then his life would be ruined anyway. It would all be dragged through the

newspapers, dug up and brought into the light like the half-decayed bodies

in Dussander's cellar.

The man in that picture is the man who came to my office when you were

in the ninth grade,' Ed told him abruptly, turning to Todd again. 'He

purported to be your grandfather. Now it turns out he was a wanted war

criminal.'

'Yes,' Todd said. His face had gone oddly blank. It was the face of a

department store dummy. All the healthiness, life, and vivacity had drained

from it What was left was frightening in its vacuous emptiness.

'How did it happen?' Ed asked, and perhaps he intended his question as a

thundering accusation, but it came out sounding plaintive and lost and

somehow cheated. 'How did this happen, Todd?'

'Oh, one thing just followed another,' Todd said, and picked up

the.30-.30. 'That's really how it happened. One thing just followed

another.' He pushed the safety catch to the off position with his thumb and

pointed the rifle at Rubber Ed. 'As stupid as it sounds, that's just what

happened. That's all there was to it.'

'Todd,' Ed said, his eyes widening. He took a step backward. Todd, you

don't want to please, Todd. We can talk this over. We can disc -'

'You and the fucking kraut can discuss it down in hell,' Todd said, and

pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot rolled away in the hot and windless

quiet of the afternoon. Ed French was flung back against his Saab. His hand

groped behind him and tore off a windshield wiper. He stared at it foolishly

as blood spread on his blue turtleneck, and then he dropped it and looked at

Todd. 'Norma,' he whispered.

'Okay,' Todd said. 'Whatever you say, champ.' He shot Rubber Ed again

and roughly half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood and bone.

Ed turned drunkenly and began to grope towards the driver's side door,

speaking his daughter's name over and over again in a choked and failing

voice. Todd shot him again, aiming for the base of the spine, and Ed fell

down. His feet drummed briefly on the gravel and then were still.

Sure did die hard for a guidance counsellor, Todd thought, and brief

laughter escaped him. At the same moment a burst of pain as sharp as an

icepick drove into his brain and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he felt better than he had in months-maybe

better than he had felt in years. Everything was fine. Everything was

together. The blankness left his face and a kind of wild beauty filled it.

He went back into the garage and got all the shells he had, better than

four hundred rounds. He put them in his old knapsack and shouldered it

When he came back out into the sunshine he was smiling excitedly, his eyes

dancing-it was the way boys smile on their birthdays, on Christmas, on the

Fourth of July. It was a smile that betokened skyrockets, treehouses, secret

signs and secret meeting-places, the aftermath of the triumphal big game

when the players are carried into town on the shoulders of the exultant fans.

The ecstatic smile of tow-headed boys going off to war in coalscuttle

helmets.

'I'm king of the world!' he shouted mightily at the high blue sky, and

raised the rifle two-handed over his head for a moment. Then, switching it

to his right hand, he started towards that place above the freeway where the

land fell away and where the dead tree would give him shelter.

It was five hours later and almost dark before they took him down.

The End

THE BODY

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the

things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them-words shrink

things that seemed limitless when they were In your head to no more than

living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The

most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried,

like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And

you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at

you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you

thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.

That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want

of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

I was twelve going on thirteen when I first saw a dead human being. It

happened in 1960, a long time ago although sometimes it doesn't seem

that long to me. Especially on the nights I wake up from those dreams

where the hail fell into his open eyes.

We had a treehouse in a big elm which overhung a vacant lot in Castle

Rock. There's a moving company on that lot today, and the elm is gone.

Progress. It was a sort of social club, although it had no name. There were

five, maybe six steady guys and some other wet ends who just hung around.

We'd let them come up when there was a card game and we needed some

fresh blood. The game was usually blackjack and we played for pennies,

nickel limit. But you got double money on blackjack and five-card-under

triple money on six-card-under, although Teddy was the only guy crazy

enough to go for that.

The sides of the treehouse were planks scavenged from the shitpile

behind Makey Lumber & Building Supply on Carbine Road-they were

splintery and full of knotholes we plugged with either toilet paper or paper

towels. The roof was a corrugated tin sheet we hawked from the dump,

looking over our shoulders all the time we were hustling it out of there,

because the dump custodian's dog was supposed to be a real kid-eating

monster. We found a screen door out there on the same day. It was flyproof

but really rusty -I mean, that rust was extreme. No matter what time of day

you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset Besides playing cards,

the club was a good place to go and smoke cigarettes and look at girly

books. There were half a dozen battered tin ashtrays that said CAMELS on

the bottom, a lot of centerfolds tacked to the splintery walls, twenty or thirty

dog-eared packs of Bike cards (Teddy got them from his uncle, who ran the

Castle Rock Stationery Shoppe-when Teddy's unc asked him one day what

kind of cards we played, Teddy said we had cribbage tournaments and

Teddy's unc thought that was just fine), a set of plastic poker chips, and a

pile of ancient Master Detective murder magazines to leaf through if there

was nothing else shaking. We also built a 12" x 10" secret compartment

under the floor to hide most of this stuff in on the rare occasions when some

kid's father decided it was time to do the We're Really Good Pals routine.

When it rained, being in the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel

drum but that summer there had been no rain.

It had been the driest and hottest since 1907-or so the newspapers said,

and on that Friday preceding the Labour Day weekend and the start of

another school year, even the goldenrod in the fields and the ditches beside

the backroads looked parched and poorly.

Nobody's garden had done doodly-squat that year, and the big displays of

canning stuff in the Castle Rock Red & White were still there, gathering

dust. No one had anything to put up that summer, except maybe dandelion

wine.

Teddy and Chris and I were up in the club on that Friday morning,

glooming to each other about school being so near and playing cards and

swapping the same old travelling salesman jokes and Frenchman jokes.

How do you know when a Frenchman's been in your back yard? Well, your

garbage cans are empty and your dog is pregnant. Teddy would try to look

offended, but he was the first one to bring in a joke as soon as he heard it,

only switching Frenchman to Polack.

The elm gave good shade, but we already had our shirts off so we

wouldn't sweat them up too bad. We were playing three-penny-scat, the

dullest card game ever invented, but it was too hot to think about anything

more complicated. We'd had a pretty fair scratch ballteam until the middle

of August and then a lot of kids just drifted away. Too hot I was down to my

ride and building spades. I'd started with thirteen, gotten an eight to make

twenty-one, and nothing had happened since then. Chris knocked. I took my

last draw and got nothing helpful.

'Twenty-nine,' Chris said, laying down diamonds.

'Twenty-two,' Teddy said, looking disgusted.

'Piss up a rope,' I said, and tossed my cards onto the table face-down.

'Gordie's out, ole Gordie just bit the bag and stepped out the door,' Teddy

bugled, and then gave out with his patented Teddy Duchamp laugh-Eeee-

eee-eee, like a rusty nail being slowly hauled out of a rotten board. Well, he

was weird; we all knew it. Close to being thirteen like the rest of us, the

thick glasses and the hearing aid he wore sometimes made him look like an

old man. Kids were always trying to cadge smokes off him on the street, but

the bulge in his shirt was just his hearing aid battery.

In spite of the glasses and the flesh-coloured button always screwed into

his ear, Teddy couldn't see very well and often misunderstood the things

people said to him. In baseball you had to have him play the fences, way

beyond Chris in left field and Billy Greer in right. You just hoped no one

would hit one that far because Teddy would go grimly after it, see it or not.

Every now and then he got bonked a good one, and once he went out cold

when he ran full tilt boogie into the fence by the treehouse. He lay there on

his back with his eyes showing whites for almost five minutes, and I got

scared. Then he woke up and walked around with a bloody nose and a huge

purple lump rising on his forehead, trying to claim that the ball was foul.

His eyesight was just naturally bad, but there was nothing natural about

what had happened to his ears. Back in those days, when it was cool to get

your hair cut so that your ears stuck out like a couple of jug-handles, Teddy

had Castle Rock's first Beatle haircut-four years before anyone in America

had even heard of the Beatles. He kept his ears covered because they looked

like two lumps of warm wax.

One day when he was eight, Teddy's father got pissed at him for breaking

a plate. His mother was working at the shoe factory in South Paris when it

happened and by the time she found out about it, everything had happened.

Teddy's dad took Teddy over to the big woodstove at the back of the

kitchen and shoved the side of Teddy's head down against one of the cast-

iron burner plates. He held it down there for about ten seconds. Then he

yanked Teddy up by the hair and did the other side. Then he called the

Central Maine General Emergency Unit and told them to come get his boy.

Then he hung up the phone, went into the closet, got his four-ten, and sat

down to watch the daytime stories on TV with the shotgun laid across his

knees. When Mrs Burroughs from next door came over to ask if Teddy was

all right-she'd heard the screaming-Teddy's dad pointed the shotgun at her.

Mrs Burroughs went out of the Duchamp house at roughly the speed of

light, locked herself into her own house, and called the police. When the

ambulance came, Mr. Duchamp let the orderlies in and then went out on the

back porch to stand guard while they wheeled Teddy to the old portholed

Buick ambulance on a stretcher.

Teddy's dad explained to the orderlies that while the fucking brass hats

said the area was clear, there were still Kraut snipers everywhere. One of

the orderlies asked Teddy's Dad if he thought he could hold on. Teddy's dad

smiled. Frigidaire dealership, if that's what it took. The orderly saluted, and

Teddy's dad snapped it right back at him. A few minutes after the

ambulance left, the state police arrived and relieved Norman Duchamp of

duty. He'd been doing odd things like shooting cats and lighting fires in

mailboxes for over a year, and after the atrocity he had visited upon his son,

they had a quick hearing and sent him to Togus, which is a special sort of V.

A. hospital. Togus is where you have to go if you're a section eight. Teddy's

dad had stormed the beach at Normandy, and that's just the way Teddy

always put it. Teddy was proud of his old man in spite of what his old man

had done to him, and Teddy went with his mom to visit him every week. He

was the dumbest guy we hung around with, I guess, and he was crazy. He'd

take the craziest chances you can imagine, and get away with them. His big

thing was what he called Truck Dodging. He'd run out in front of them on

196 and sometimes they'd miss him by bare inches. God knew how many

heart attacks he'd caused, and he'd be laughing while the windblast from the

passing truck rippled his clothes. It scared us because his vision was so

lousy. Coke-bottle glasses or not. It seemed like only a matter of time

before he misjudged one of those trucks. And you had to be careful what

you dared him, because Teddy would do anything on a dare. 'Gordie's out,

eeeeee-eee-eee!'

'Screw,' I said, and picked up a Master Detective to read while they

played it out. I turned to 'He Stomped the Pretty Co-Ed to Death in a Stalled

Elevator' and got right into it. Teddy picked up the cards, gave them one

brief look, and said: 'I knock.'

'You four-eyed pile of shit!' Chris cried.

'The pile of shit has a thousand eyes,' Teddy said seriously, and both

Chris and I cracked up. Teddy stared at us with a slight frown, as if

wondering what had gotten us laughing. That was another thing about the

cat-he was always coming out with weird stuff like "The pile of shit has a

thousand eyes', and you could never be sure if he meant it to he funny or if

it just happened that way. He'd look at the people who were laughing with

that slight frown on his face, as if to say O Lord what is it this time? Teddy

had a natural thirty-jack, queen, and king of clubs. Chris had only sixteen

and went down to his ride.

Teddy was shuffling the cards in his clumsy way and I was just getting to

the gooshy part of the murder story, where this deranged sailor from New

Orleans was doing the Bristol Stomp all over this college girl from Bryn

Mawr because he couldn't

stand being in closed-in spaces, when we heard someone coming fast up

the ladder nailed to the side of the elm. A fist rapped on the underside of the

trapdoor.

'Who goes?' Chris yelled.

'Vern!' He sounded excited and out of breath.

I went to the trapdoor and pulled the bolt. The trapdoor banged up and

Vern Tessio, one of the other regulars, pulled himself into the clubhouse. He

was sweating buckets and his hair, which he usually kept combed in a

perfect imitation of his rock and roll idol, Bobby Rydell, was plastered to

his bullet head in chunks and strings.

'Wow, man,' he panted. 'Wait'll you hear this.'

'Hear what?' I asked.

'Lemme get my breath. I ran all the way from my house.'

'I ran all the way home,' Teddy wavered in a dreadful Little Anthony

falsetto, 'just to say I'm soh-ree-

'Tuck your hand, man,' Vern said.

'Drop dead in a shed, Fred,' Teddy returned smartly.

'You ran all the way from your place?' Chris asked unbelievingly. 'Man,

you're

crazy.'

Vern's house was two miles down Grand Street. 'It must be ninety out

there.'

'This is worth it,' Vern said. 'Holy Jeezum. You won't believe this.

Sincerely.' He slapped his sweaty forehead to show us how sincere he was.

'Okay, what?' Chris asked.

'Can you guys camp out tonight?' Vern was looking at us earnestly,

excitedly. His eyes looked like raisins pushed into dark circles of sweat 'I

mean, if you tell your folks we're gonna tent out in my back field?'

'Yeah, I guess so,' Chris said, picking up his new hand and y'know.'

'You got to, man,' Vern said. 'Sincerely. You won't believe this. Can you,

Gordie?'

'Probably.'

I was able to do most stuff like that-in fact, I'd been like the Invisible Boy

that whole summer. In April my older brother, Dennis, had been killed in a

Jeep accident. That was at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was in basic.

He and another guy were on their way to the PX and an army truck hit them

broadside. Dennis was killed instantly and his passenger had been in a coma

ever since. Dennis would have been twenty later that week.

I'd already picked out a birthday card for him at Dahlie's over in Castle

Green.

I cried when I heard, and I cried more at the funeral, and I couldn't

believe that Dennis was gone, that anyone that used to knuckle my head or

scare me with a rubber spider until I cried or give me a kiss when I fell

down and scraped both knees bloody and whisper in my ear, 'Now stop

cryin', ya baby!'-that a person who had touched me could be dead. It hurt

me and it scared me that he could be dead but it seemed to have taken all

the heart out of my parents. For me, Dennis was hardly more than an

acquaintance. He was eight years older than me if you can dig it, and he had

his own friends and classmates. We ate at the same table for a lot of years,

and sometimes he was my friend and sometimes my tormentor, but mostly

he was, you know, just a guy. When he died he'd been gone for a year

except for a couple of furloughs. We didn't even look alike. It took me a

long time after that summer to realize that most of the tears I cried were for

my mom and dad. Fat lot of good it did them, or me.

'So what are you pissing and moaning about, Vern-O?' Teddy asked.

'I knock,' Chris said.

'What?' Teddy screamed, immediately forgetting all about Vern. 'You

friggin' liar! You ain't got to pat hand. I didn't deal you no pat hand.' Chris

smirked. 'Make your draw, shitheap.'

Teddy reached for the top card of the pile of Bikes. Chris reached for the

Winstons on the ledge behind him. I bent over to pick up my detective

magazine. Vern Tessio said: 'You guys want to go see a dead body?'

Everybody stopped.

We'd all heard about it on the radio, of course. The radio, a Philco with a

cracked case which had also been scavenged from the dump, played all the

time. We kept it tuned to WLAM in Lewiston, which churned out the super-

hits and the boss oldies: 'What in the World's Come Over You' by Jack Scott

and 'This Time' by Troy Shondell and 'King Creole' by Elvis and 'Only the

Lonely' by Roy Orbison. When the news came on we usually switched

some mental dial over to Mute. The news was a lot of happy horseshit about

Kennedy and Nixon and Quemoy and Matsu and the missile gap and what a

shit that Castro was turning out to be after all. But we had all listened to the

Ray Brower story a little more closely, because he was a kid our age.

He was from Chamberlain, a town forty miles or so east of Castle Rock.

Three days before Vern came busting into the clubhouse after a two-mile

run up Grand Street, Ray Brower had gone out with one of his mother's pots

to pick blueberries. When dark came and he still wasn't back, the Browers

called the county sheriff and a search started-first just around the kid's

house and then spreading to the surrounding towns of Motton and Durham

and Pownal. Everybody got into the act-cops, deputies, game wardens,

volunteers. But three days later the kid was still missing. You could tell,

hearing about it on the radio, that they were never going to find that poor

sucker alive; eventually the search would just peter away into nothing. He

might have gotten smothered in a gravel pit slide or drowned in a brook,

and ten years from now some hunter would find his bones. They were

already dragging the ponds in Chamberlain, and the Motton Reservoir.

Nothing like that could happen in south-western Maine today; most of the

area has become suburbanized, and the bedroom communities surrounding

Portland and Lewiston have spread out like the tentacles of a giant squid.

The woods are still there, and they get heavier as you work your way west

towards the White Mountains, but these days if you can keep your head

long enough to walk five miles in one consistent direction, you're certain to

cross two-lane blacktop. But in 1960 the whole area between Chamberlain

and Castle Rock was undeveloped, and there were places that hadn't even

been logged since before World War II. In those days it was still possible to

walk into the woods and lose your direction there and die there.

Vern Tessio had been under his porch that morning, digging.

We all understood that right away, but maybe I should take just a minute

to explain it to you. Teddy Duchamp was only about half-bright, but Vern

Tessio would never be spending any of his spare time on Quiz Kids either.

Still, his brother Billy was even dumber, as you will see. But first I have to

tell you why Vern was digging under the porch.

Four years ago, when he was eight, Vern buried a quart jar of pennies

under the long Tessio front porch. Vern called the dark space under the

porch his 'cave'. He was playing a pirate sort of game, and the pennies were

buried treasure -only if you were playing pirate with Vern, you couldn't call

it buried treasure, you had to call it 'booty'. So he buried the jar of pennies

deep, filled in the hole, and covered the fresh dirt with some of the old

leaves that had drifted under there over the years. He drew a treasure map

which he put up in his room with the rest of his junk. He forgot all about it

for a month or so. Then, being low on cash for a movie or something, he

remembered the pennies and went to get his map. But his mom had been in

to clean two or three times since then, and had collected all the old

homework papers and candy wrappers and comic magazines and joke

books. She burned them in the stove to start the cook-fire one morning, and

Vern's treasure map went right up the kitchen chimney. Or so he figured it.

He tried to find the spot from memory and dug there. No luck. To the

right and the left of that spot. Still no luck. He gave up for the day but had

tried off and on ever since. Four years, man. Four years. Isn't that a pisser?

You didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It had gotten to be sort of an

obsession with him. The Tessio front porch ran the length of the house,

probably forty feet long and seven feet wide. He had dug through damn

near every inch of that area two, maybe three times and no pennies. The

number of pennies began to grow in his mind. When it first happened he

told Chris and me that there had been maybe three dollars' worth. A year

later he was up to five and just lately it was running around ten, more or

less, depending on how broke he was. Every so often we tried to tell him

what was so clear to us-that Billy had known about the jar and dug it up

himself. Vern refused to believe it, although he hated Billy like the Arabs

hate the Jews and probably would have cheerfully voted the death penalty

on his brother for shoplifting, if the opportunity had ever presented itself.

He also refused to ask Billy point blank. Probably he was afraid Billy

would laugh and say, Course I got them, you stupid pussy, and there was

twenty bucks' worth of pennies in that jar and I spent every fuckin' cent of

it. Instead, Vern went out and dug for the pennies whenever the spirit

moved him (and whenever Billy wasn't around). He always crawled out

from under the porch with his jeans dirty and his hair leafy and his hands

empty. We ragged him about it something wicked, and his nickname was

Penny-Penny Tessio. I think he came up to the club with his news as quick

as he did not just to get it out but to show us that some good had finally

come of his penny-hunt He had been up that morning before anybody, ate

his cornflakes, and was out in the driveway shooting baskets through the

old hoop nailed up on the garage, nothing much to do. No one to play Ghost

with or anything, and he decided to have another dig for his pennies. He

was under the porch when the screen door slammed up above. He froze, not

making a sound. If it was his dad, he would crawl out; if it was Billy, he'd

stay put until Billy and hisfriend Charlie Hogan had taken off.

Two pairs of footsteps crossed the porch, and then Charlie Hogan himself

said in a trembling, cry-baby voice: 'Jesus Christ, Billy, what are we gonna

do?' Vern said that just hearing Charlie Hogan talk like that -Charlie, who

was one of the toughest

kids in town-made him prick up his ears. Charlie, after all, hung out with

Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers, and if you hung out with cats like that,

you had to be tough.

'Nuthin',' Billy said. "That's all we're gonna do. Nuthin'.'

'We gotta do somethin' Charlie said, and they sat down on the porch close

to where Vern was hunkered down. 'Didn't you see him?'

Vern took a chance and crept a little closer to the steps, practically

slavering. At that point he thought that maybe Billy and Charlie had been

really drunked up and had run somebody down. Vern was careful not to

crackle any of the old leaves as he moved. If the two of them found out he

was under the porch and had overheard them, you could have put what was

left of him in a Ken-L-Ration dogfood can.

'It's nuthin' to us,' Billy Tessio said. "The kid's dead so it's nuthin' to him,

neither. Who gives a fuck if they ever find him? I don't.'

'It was that kid they been talkin' about on the radio,' Charlie said. 'It was,

sure as shit Brocker, Brower, Flowers, whatever his name is. Fuckin' train

must have hit him.'

'Yeah,' Billy said. Sound of a scratched match. Vern saw it flicked into

the gravel driveway and then smelled cigarette smoke. 'It sure did. And you

puked.'

No words, but Vern sensed emotional waves of shame radiating off

Charlie

Hogan.

'Well, the girls didn't see it,' Billy said after a while. 'Lucky break.' From

the sound, he clapped Charlie on the back to buck him up. "They'd blab it

from here to Portland. We tore out of there fast, though. You think they

knew there was something wrong?'

'No,' Charlie said, 'Marie don't like to go down that Back Harlow Road

past the cemetery, anyway. She's afraid of ghosts.' Then again in that scared

cry-baby voice: 'Jesus, I wish we'd never boosted no car last night! Just

gone to the show like we was gonna!'

Charlie and Billy went with a couple of scags named Marie Daughtery

and Beverly Thomas; you never saw such gross-looking broads outside of a

carnival show-pimples, moustaches, the whole works. Sometimes the four

of them -or maybe six or eight if Fuzzy Brackowicz or Ace Merrill were

along with their girls-would boost a car from a Lewiston parking lot and go

joyriding out into the country with two or three bottles of Wild Irish Rose

wine and a six-pack of ginger ale. They'd take the girls parking somewhere

in Castle View or Harlow or Shiloh, drink Purple Jesuses, and make out.

Then they'd dump the car somewhere near home. Cheap thrills in the

monkeyhouse, as Chris sometimes said. They'd never been caught at it, but

Vern kept hoping. He really dug the idea of visiting Billy on Sundays at the

reformatory.

'If we told the cops, they'd want to know how we got way the hell out in

Harlow,' Billy said. 'We ain't got no car, neither of us. It's better if we just

keep our mouths shut. Then they can't touch us.'

'We could make a nonnamus call,' Charlie said.

"They trace those fuckin* calls,' Billy said ominously. 'I seen it on

Highway Patrol. And Dragnet.'

'Yeah, right,' Charlie said miserably. 'Jesus. I wish Ace'd been with us.

We could have told the cops we was in his car.'

'Well, he wasn't'

'Yeah,' Charlie said. He sighed. 'I guess you're right' A cigarette butt

flicked into the driveway. 'We hadda walk up and take a piss by the tracks,

didn't we? Couldn't walk the other way, could we? And I got puke on my

new Keds.' His voice sank a little. 'Fuckin' kid was laid right out, you know

it? Didja see that sonofawhore, Billy?'

'I seen him,' Billy said, and a second cigarette butt joined the first in the

driveway. 'Let's go see if Ace is up. I want some juice.'

'We gonna tell him?'

'Charlie, we ain't gonna tell nobody. Nobody never. You dig me?'

'I dig you,' Charlie said. 'Christ-Jesus, I wish we never boosted that

fuckin'

Dodge.'

'Aw, shut the fuck up and come on.'

Two pairs of legs clad in tight, wash-faded pegged jeans, two pairs of feet

in black engineer boots with side-buckles, came down the steps. Vern froze

on his hands and knees ('My balls crawled up so high I thought they was

trine to get back home,' he told us), sure his brother would sense him

beneath the porch and drag him out and kill him-he and Charlie Hogan

would kick the few brains the good Lord had seen fit to give him right out

his jug ears and then stomp him with their engineer boots. But they just kept

going and when Vern was sure they were really gone, he had crawled out

from under the porch and run here.

'You're really lucky,' I said. 'They would have killed you.'

Teddy said, 'I know the Back Harlow Road. It comes to a dead end by the

river. We used to fish for cossies out there.'

Chris nodded. 'There used to be a bridge, but there was a flood. A long

time ago. Now there's just the train-tracks.'

'Could a kid really have gotten all the way from Chamberlain to Harlow?'

I asked Chris. That's twenty or thirty miles.'

'I think so. He probably happened on the train tracks and followed them

the whole way. Maybe he thought they'd take him out, or maybe he thought

he could flag down a train if he had to. But that's just a freight run now-

GS&WM up to Derry and Brownsville-and not many of those anymore.

He'd had to've walked all the way to Castle Rock to get out. After dark a

train must have finally come along and el smacko.' Chris drove his right

fist down against his left palm, making a flat noise. Teddy, a veteran of

many close calls dodging the pulp-trucks on 196, looked vaguely pleased. I

felt a little sick, imagining the kid so far away from home, scared to death

but doggedly following the GS&WM tracks, probably walking on the ties

because of the night-noises from the overhanging trees and bushes maybe

even from the culverts underneath the railroad bed. And here comes the

train, and maybe the big headlight on the front hypnotised him until it was

too late to jump. Or maybe he was just lying there on the tracks in a hunger-

faint when the train came along. Either way, any way, Chris had the straight

of it: el smacko had been the final result. The kid was dead.

'So anyway, you want to go see it?' Vern asked. He was squirming around

like he had to go to the bathroom he was so excited.

We all looked at him for a long second, no one saying anything. Then

Chris tossed his cards down and said, 'Sure! And I bet you anything we get

our pictures in the paper!'

'Huh?' Vern said.

'Yeah?' Teddy said, and grinned his crazy truck-dodging grin. 'Look,'

Chris said, leaning across the ratty card-table. 'We can find the body and

report it!

Well be on the news!'

'I dunno,' Vern said, obviously taken aback. 'Billy will know where I

found out. He'll beat the living shit outta me.'

'No he won't,' I said, 'because it'll be us guys that find that kid, not Billy

and Charlie Hogan in a boosted car. Then they won't have to worry about it

anymore. They'll probably pin a medal on you, Penny.'

'Yeah?' Vern grinned, showing his bad teeth. It was a dazed sort of grin,

as if the thought of Billy being pleased with anything he did had acted on

him like a hard shot to the chin.

'Yeah, you think so?'

Teddy was grinning, too. Then he frowned and said, 'Oh-oh.'

'What?' Vern asked. He was squirming again, afraid that some really

basic objection to the idea had just cropped up in Teddy's mind or what

passed for Teddy's mind.

'Our folks,' Teddy said. 'If we find that kid's body over in South Harlow

tomorrow, they're gonna know we didn't spend the night campin* out in

Vern's back field.'

'Yeah,' Chris said. They'll know we went lookin' for that kid.'

'No they won't,' I said. I felt funny-both excited and scared because I

knew we could do it and get away with it. The mixture of emotions made

me feel heatsick and headachey. I picked up the Bikes to have something to

do with my hands and started box-shuffling them. That and how to play

cribbage was about all I got for older brother stuff from Dennis. The other

kids envied that shuffle, and I guess everyone I knew had asked me to show

them how it went everyone except Chris. I guess only Chris knew that

showing someone would be like giving away a piece of Dennis, and I just

didn't have so much of him that I could afford to pass pieces around.

I said: 'We'll just tell 'em we got bored tenting in Vern's field because

we've done it so many times before. So we decided to hike up the tracks and

have a campout in the woods. I bet we don't even get hided for it because

everybody'll be so excited about what we found.'

'My dad'll hide me anyway,' Chris said. 'He's on a really mean streak this

time.' He shook his head sullenly. 'To hell, it's worth a hiding.'

'Okay,' Teddy said, getting up. He was still grinning like crazy, ready to

break into his high-pitched, cackling laugh at any second. 'Let's all get

together at Vern's house after lunch. What can we tell 'em about supper?'

Chris said, 'You and me and Gordie can say we're eating at Vern's.'

'And I'll tell my mom I'm eating over at Chris's,' Vern said.

That would work unless there was some emergency we couldn't control

or unless any of the parents got together. And neither Vern's folks or Chris's

had a phone. Back then there were a lot of families which still considered a

telephone a luxury, especially families of the shirttail variety. And none of

us came from the upper crust.

My dad was retired. Vern's dad worked in the mill and was still driving a

1952 DeSoto.

Teddy's mom had a house on Danberry Street and she took in a boarder

whenever she could get one. She didn't have one that summer; the

FURNISHED ROOM TO LET sign had been up in the parlour window

since June. And Chris's dad was always on a 'mean streak', more or less; he

was a drunk who got welfare off and on-mostly on-and spent most of his

time hanging out in Sukey's Tavern with Junior Merrill, Ace Merrill's old

man, and a couple of other local rumpots.

Chris didn't talk much about his dad, but we all knew he hated him like

poison. Chris was marked up every two weeks or so, bruises on his cheeks

and neck or one eye swelled up and as colourful as a sunset, and once he

came into school with a big clumsy bandage on the back of his head. Other

times he never got to school at all. His mom would call him in sick because

he was too lamed up to come in. Chris was smart, really smart, but he

played truant a lot, and Mr. Halliburton, the town truant officer, was always

showing up at Chris's house, driving his old black Chevrolet with the NO

RIDERS sticker in the corner of the windshield. If Chris was being truant

and Bertie (as we called him-always behind his back, of course) caught

him, he would haul him back to school and see that Chris got detention for

a week. But if Bertie found out that Chris was home because his father had

beaten the shit out of him, Bertie just went away and didn't say boo to a

cuckoo-bird. It never occurred to me to question this set of priorities until

about twenty years later. The year before, Chris had been suspended from

school for two weeks. A bunch of milk-money disappeared when it was

Chris's turn to be room-monitor and collect it, and because he was a

Chambers from those no-account Chamberses, he had to take a walk even

though he always swore he never hawked that money. That was the time Mr

Chambers put Chris in the hospital for an overnight stay, when his dad

heard Chris was suspended, he broke Chris's nose and his right wrist. Chris

came from a bad family, all right, and everybody thought he would turn out

bad including Chris. His brothers had lived up to the town's expectations

admirably. Dave, the eldest, ran away from home when he was seventeen,

joined the Navy, and ended up doing a long stretch in Portsmouth for rape

and criminal assault. The next eldest, Richard (his right eye was all funny

and jittery, which was why everybody called him Eyeball), had dropped out

of high school in the tenth grade, and chummed around with Charlie and

Billy Tessio and their buddies.

'I think all that'll work,' I told Chris. 'What about John and Marty?' John

and Marty DeSpain were two other members of our regular gang. 'They're

still away,' Chris said. 'They won't be back until Monday.'

'Oh. That's too bad.'

'So are we set?' Vern asked, still squirming. He didn't want the

conversation sidetracked even for a minute.

'I guess we are,' Chris said. 'Who wants to play some more scat?' No one

did. We were too excited to play cards. We climbed down from the

treehouse, climbed the fence into the vacant lot, and played three-flies-six-

grounders for a while with Vein's old friction-taped baseball, but that was

no fun, either. All we could think about was that kid Brower, hit by a train,

and how we were going to see him, or what was left of him. Around ten

o'clock we all drifted away home to fix it with our parents.

I got to my house at quarter to eleven, after stopping at the drugstore to

check out the paperbacks. I did that every couple of days to see if there

were any new John D MacDonalds. I had a quarter and I figured if there

was, I'd take it along. But there were only the old ones, and I'd read most of

those half a dozen times.

When I got home the car was gone and I remembered that my mom and

some of her henparty friends had gone to Boston to see a concert. A great

old concert-goer, my mother. And why not? Her only kid was dead and she

had to do something to take her mind off it.

I guess that sounds pretty bitter. And I guess if you'd been there, you'd

understand why I felt that way.

Dad was out back, passing a fine spray from the hose over his ruined

garden. If you couldn't tell it was a lost cause from his glum face, you sure

could by looking at the garden itself. The soil was light, powdery grey.

Everything in it was dead except for the corn, which had never grown so

much as a single edible ear. Dad said he'd never known how to water a

garden; it had to be mother nature or nobody. He'd water too long in one

spot and drown the plants. In the next row, plants were dying of thirst. He

could never hit a happy medium. But he didn't talk about it often. He'd lost

a son in April and a garden in August. And if he didn't want to talk about

either one, I guess that was his privilege. It just bugged me that he'd given

up talking about everything else, too. That was taking democracy too

fucking far.

'Hi, daddy,' I said, standing beside him. I offered him the Rollos I'd

bought at the drugstore. 'Want one?'

'Hello, Gordon. No thanks.' He kept flicking the fine spray over the

hopeless grey earth.

'Be okay if I camp out in Vern Tessio's back field tonight with some of

the

guys?'

'What guys?'

'Vern. Teddy Duchamp. Maybe Chris.' I expected him to start right in on

Chris-how Chris was bad company, a rotten apple from the bottom of the

barrel, a thief, and an apprentice juvenile delinquent. But he just sighed and

said, 'I suppose it's okay.'

'Great!

Thanks!'

I turned to go into the house and check out what was on the boob tube

when he stopped me with: 'Those are the only people you want to be with,

aren't they, Gordon?'

I looked back at him, braced for an argument, but there was no argument

in him that morning. It would have been better if there had been, I think.

His shoulders were slumped. His face, pointed towards the dead garden and

not towards me, sagged. There was a certain unnatural sparkle in his eyes

that might have been tears.

'Aw, dad, they're okay -'

'Of course they are. A thief and two feebs. Fine company for my son.'

'Vern Tessio isn't feeble,' I said. Teddy was a harder case to argue.

Twelve years old and still in the fifth grade,' my dad said. 'And that time

he slept over. When the Sunday paper came the next morning, he took an

hour and a half to read the funnypages.'

That made me mad, because I didn't think he was being fair. He was

judging Vern the way he judged all my friends, from having seen them off

and on, mostly going in and out of the house. He was wrong about them.

And when he called Chris a thief I always saw red, because he didn't know

anything about Chris. I wanted to tell

him that, but if I pissed him off he'd keep me home. And he wasn't really

mad anyway, not like he got at the supper-table sometimes, ranting so loud

that nobody wanted to eat. Now he just looked sad and tired out and used.

He was sixty three years old, old enough to be my grandfather.

My mom was fifty-five-no spring chicken, either. When she and dad got

married they tried to start a family right away and my mom got pregnant

and had a miscarriage. She miscarried two more and the doctor told her

she'd never be able to carry a baby to term. I got all of this stuff, chapter and

verse, whenever one of them was lecturing me, you understand. They

wanted me to think I was a special delivery from God and I wasn't

appreciating my great good fortune in being conceived when my mother

was forty-two and starting to grey. I wasn't appreciating my great good

fortune and I wasn't appreciating her tremendous pain and sacrifices, either.

Five years after the doctor said mom would never have a baby she got

pregnant with Dennis. She carried him for eight months and then he just

sort of fell out, all eight pounds of him-my father used to say that if she had

carried Dennis to term, the kid would have weighed fifteen pounds. The

doctor said, Well, sometimes nature fools us, but he'll be the only one you'll

ever have. Thank God for him and be content. Ten years later she got

pregnant with me. She not only carried me to term, the doctor had to use

forceps to yank me out. Did you ever hear of such a fucked-up family? I

came into the world the child of two Geritol-chuggers, not to go on and on

about it, and my only brother was playing league baseball in the big kids'

park before I even got out of diapers. In the case of my mom and dad, one

gift from God had been enough. I won't say they treated me badly, and they

sure never beat me, but I was a hell of a big surprise and I guess when you

get into your forties you're not as partial to surprises as you were in your

twenties. After I was born, Mom got that operation her hen-party friends

referred to as 'the Band-Aid'. I guess she wanted to make a hundred per cent

sure that there wouldn't be any more gifts from God. When I got to college I

found out I'd beaten long odds just by not being born retarded although I

think my dad had his doubts when he saw my friend Vern taking ten

minutes to puzzle out the dialogue in Beetle Bailey. This business about

being ignored: I could never really pin it down until I did a book report in

high school on this novel called Invisible Man. When I agreed to do the

book for Miss Hardy I thought it was going to be the science fiction story

about the guy in bandages and Foster Grants-Claude Rains played him in

the movies. When I found out this was a different story I tried to give the

book back but Miss Hardy wouldn't let me off the hook. I ended up being

real glad. This Invisible Man is about a Negro. Nobody ever notices him at

all unless he fucks up. People look right through him. When he talks,

nobody answers. He's like a black ghost. Once I got into it, I ate that book

up like it was a John D MacDonald, because that cat Ralph Ellison was

writing about me. At the supper table it was Denny how many did you

strike out and Denny who asked you to the Sadie Hopkins dance and Denny

I want to talk to you man to man about that car we were looking at. I'd say,

'Pass the butter', and Dad would say, Denny, are you sure the army is what

you want? I'd say, 'Pass the butter someone, okay?' and Mom would ask

Denny if he wanted her to pick him up one of the Pendleton shirts on sale

downtown, and I'd end up getting the butter myself. One night when I was

nine, just to see what would happen, I said, 'Please pass those goddam

spuds.' And my Mom said, Denny, Auntie Grace called today and she asked

after you and Gordon.

The night Dennis graduated with honours from Castle Rock High School

I played sick and stayed home. I got Stevie Darabont's oldest brother Royce

to buy me a bottle of Wild Irish Rose and I drank half of it and puked in my

bed in the middle of the night. In a family situation like that, you're

supposed to either hate the older brother or idolize him hopelessly-at least

that's what they teach you in college psychology. Bullshit, right? But so far

as I can tell, I didn't feel either way about Dennis. We rarely argued and

never had a fist-fight. That would have been ridiculous. Can you see a

fourteen-year-old boy finding something to beat up his four-year-old

brother about? And our folks were always a little too impressed with him to

burden him with the care of his kid brother, so he never resented me the

way some older kids come to resent their sibs. When Denny took me with

him somewhere, it was of his own free will, and those were some of the

happiest times I can remember.

'Hey Lachance, who the fuck is that?'

'My kid brother and you better watch your mouth, Davis. He'll beat the

crap out of you. Gordie's tough.'

They gather around me for a moment, huge, impossibly tall, just a

moment of interest like a patch of sun. They are so big, they are so old.

'Hey kid! This wet end really your big brother?'

I nod shyly.

'He's a real asshole, ain't he, kid?'

I nod again and everybody, Dennis included, roars with laughter. Then

Dennis claps his hands together twice, briskly, and says: 'Come on, we

gonna have a practice or stand around here like a bunch of pussies?'

They run to their positions, already peppering the ball around the infield.

'Go sit over there on the bench, Gordie. Be quiet. Don't bother anybody.'

I go sit over there on the bench. I am good. I feel impossibly small under

the sweet summer clouds. I watch my brother pitch. I don't bother anybody.

But there weren't many times like that.

Sometimes he read me bedtime stories that were better than mom's;

mom's stories were about the Gingerbread Man and the Three Little Pigs,

okay stuff, but Dennis's were about stuff like Bluebeard and Jack the

Ripper. He also had a version of Billy Goat's Gruff where the troll under the

bridge ended up the winner. And, as I have already said, he taught me the

game of cribbage and how to do a box-shuffle. Not that much, but hey! in

this world you take what you can get, am I right?

As I grew older, my feelings of love for Dennis were replaced with an

almost clinical awe, the kind of awe so-so Christians feel for God, I guess.

And when he died, I was mildly shocked and mildly sad, the way I imagine

those same so-so Christians must have felt when Time magazine said God

was dead. Let me put it this way: I was as sad for Denny's dying as I was

when I heard on the radio that Dan Blocker had died. I'd seen them both

about as frequently, and Denny never ever got any re-runs.

He was buried in a closed coffin with the American flag on top (they took

the flag off the box before they finally stuck it in the ground and folded it-

the flag, not the box-into a cocked hat and gave it to my mom). My parents

just fell to pieces. Six months hadn't been long enough to put them back

together again; I didn't know if they'd ever be whole again. Mr and Mrs

Dumpty. Denny's room was in suspended animation just one door down

from my room, suspended animation or maybe in a time-warp. The ivy-

league college pennants were still on the walls, and the senior pictures of

the girls he had dated were still tucked into the mirror where he had stood

for what seemed like hours at a stretch, combing his hair back into a

ducktail like Elvis's. The stack of Trues and Sports Illustrateds remained on

his desk, their dates looking more and more antique as time passed. It's the

kind of thing you see in sticky-sentimental movies. But it wasn't

sentimental to me; it was terrible. I didn't go into

Dennis's room unless I had to because I kept expecting that he would be

behind the door, or under the bed, or in the closet.

Mostly it was the closet that preyed on my mind, and if my mother sent

me in to get Denny's postcard album or his shoebox of photographs so she

could look at them, I would imagine that door swinging slowly open while I

stood rooted to the spot with horror. I would imagine him pallid and bloody

in the darkness, the side of his head walloped in, a grey-veined cake of

blood and brains drying on his shirt. I would imagine his arms coming up,

his bloody hands hooking into claws, and he would be croaking: It should

have been you, Gordon. It should have been you.

Stud City, by Gordon Lachance. Originally published in Greenspun

Quarterly, issue 45, Fall, 1970. Used by permission of the author.

March.

Chico stands at the window, arms crossed, elbows on the ledge that

divides upper and lower panes, naked, looking out, breath fogging the glass.

A draught against his belly.

Bottom right pane is gone. Blocked by a piece of cardboard.

'Chico.'

He doesn't turn. She doesn't speak again. He can see a ghost of her in the

glass, in his bed, sitting, blankets pulled up in apparent defiance of gravity.

Her eye makeup has smeared into deep hollows under her eyes.

Chico shifts his gaze beyond her ghost, out beyond the house. Raining.

Patches of snow sloughed away to reveal the bald ground underneath. He

sees last year's dead grass, a plastic toy-Billy's-a rusty rake. His brother

Johnny's Dodge is up on blocks, the de-tired wheels sticking out like

stumps. He remembers times he and Johnny worked on it, listening to the

superhits and boss oldies from WLAM in Lewiston pour out of Johnny's old

transistor radio-a couple of times Johnny would give him a beer. She gonna

run fast, Chico, Johnny would say. She gonna eat up everything on this road

from Gates Falls to Castle Rock. Wait till we get that Hearst shifter in her!

But that had been then, and this was now.

Beyond Johnny's Dodge was the highway. Route 14, goes to Portland and

New Hampshire south, all the way to Canada north, if you turned left on US

1 at Thomaston.

'Stud city,' Chico says to the glass. He smokes his cigarette.

'What?'

'Nothing, babe.'

'Chico?' Her voice is puzzled. He will have to change the sheets before

Dad gets back.

She bled.

'What?'

'I love you, Chico.'

'That's right.'

Dirty March. You're some old whore, Chico thinks. Dirty, staggering old

baggy-tits March with rain in her face.

'This room used to be Johnny's,' he says suddenly.

'Who?'

'My brother.'

'Oh. Where is he?'

'In the Army,' Chico says, but Johnny isn't in the Army. He had been

working the summer before at Oxford Plains Speedway and a car went out

of control and skidded across the infield towards the pit area, where Johnny

had been changing the back tires on a Chevy charger-class stocker. Some

guys shouted at him to look out, but Johnny never heard them. One of the

guys who shouted was Johnny's brother Chico.

'Aren't you cold?' she asks.

'No. Well, my feet. A little.'

And he thinks suddenly: Well, my God. Nothing happened to Johnny that

isn't going to happen to you too, sooner or later. He sees it again, though:

the skidding, skating Ford Mustang, the knobs of his brother's spine picked

out in a series of dimpled shadows against the white of his Haines T-shirt;

he had been hunkered down, pulling one of the Chevy's back tires. There

had been time to see rubber flaying off the tires of the runaway Mustang, to

see its hanging muffler scraping up sparks from the infield. It had struck

Johnny even as Johnny tried to get to his feet. Then the yellow shout of

flame.

Well, Chico thinks, it could have been slow, and he thinks of his

grandfather. Hospital smells. Pretty young nurses bearing bedpans. A last

papery breath. Were there any good ways?

He shivers and wonders about God. He touches the small silver St

Christopher's medal that hangs on a chain around his neck. He is not a

Catholic and he's surely not a Mexican: his real name is Edward May and

his friends all call him Chico because his hair is black and he greases it

back with Brylcreem and he wears boots with pointed toes and Cuban heels.

Not Catholic, but he wears this medallion. Maybe if Johnny had been

wearing one, the runaway Mustang would have missed him. You never

knew.

He smokes and stares out the window and behind him the girl gets out of

bed and comes to him quickly, almost mincing, maybe afraid he will turn

around and look at her. She puts a warm hand on his back. Her breasts push

against his side. Her belly touches his buttock.

'Oh. It is cold.'

'It's this place.'

'Do you love me, Chico?'

'You bet!' he says offhandedly, and then, more seriously: 'You were

cherry.'

'What does that-'

'You were a virgin.'

The hand reaches higher. One finger traces the skin on the nape of his

neck. 'I said, didn't I?'

'Was it hard? Did it hurt?'

She laughs. 'No. But I was scared.'

They watch the rain. A new Oldsmobile goes by on 14, spraying up

water.

'Stud City,' Chico says.

'What?'

'That guy. He's going Stud City. In his new stud car.'

She kisses the place her finger has been touching gently and he brushes at

her as if she were a fly.

'What's the matter?'

He turns to her. Her eyes flick down to his penis and then up again

hastily. Her arms twitch to cover herself, and then she remembers that they

never do stuff like that in the movies and she drops them to her sides again.

Her hair is black and her skin is winter white, the colour of cream. He

breasts are firm, her belly perhaps a little too soft. One flaw to remind,

Chico thinks, that this isn't the movies.

'Jane?'

'What?' He can feel himself getting ready. Not beginning, but getting

ready. 'It's all right, ' he said. 'We're friends. ' He eyes her deliberately,

letting himself reach at her in all sorts of ways. When he looks at her face

again, it is flushed. 'Do you mind me looking at you?'

'I no. No, Chico.'

She steps back, closes her eyes, sits on the bed, and leans back, legs

spread. He sees all of her. The muscles, the little muscles on the inside of

her thighs they're jumping, uncontrolled, and this suddenly excites him

more than the taut cones of her breasts or the mild pink pearl of her cunt.

Excitement trembles in him, some stupid Bozo on a spring. Love may be as

divine as the poets say, he thinks, but sex is Bozo the clown bouncing

around on a spring. How could a woman look at an erect penis without

going off into mad gales of laughter?

The rain beats against the roof, against the window, against the sodden

cardboard patch blocking the glassless lower pane. He presses his hand

against his chest, looking for a moment like a stage Roman about to orate.

His hand is cold. He drops it to his side. 'Open your eyes. We're friends, I

said.'

Obediently, she opens them. She looks at him. Her eyes appear violet

now. The rainwater running down the window makes rippling patterns on

her face, her neck, her breasts. Stretched across the bed, her belly has been

pulled tight. She is perfect in her moment. 'Oh,' she says. 'Oh Chico, it feels

so funny,' A shiver goes through her. She has curled her toes involuntarily.

He can see the insteps of her feet. Her insteps are pink. 'Chico. Chico.' He

steps towards her. His body is shivering and her eyes widen. She says

something, one word, but he can't tell what it is. This isn't the time to ask.

He half-kneels before her for just a second, looking at the floor with

frowning concentration, touching her legs just above the knees. He

measures the tide within himself. Its pull is thoughtless, fantastic. He pauses

a little longer.

The only sound is the tinny tick of the alarm clock on the bedtable,

standing brassy-legged atop a pile of Spiderman comic books. Her

breathing flutters faster and faster. His muscles slide smoothly as he dives

upward and forward. They begin. It's better this time. Outside, the rain goes

on washing away the snow.

A half-hour later Chico shakes her out of a light doze. 'We gotta move,'

he says. 'Dad and Virginia will be home pretty quick.'

She looks at her wristwatch and sits up. This time she makes no attempt

to shield herself. Her whole tone-her body English-has changed. She has

not matured (although she probably believes she has) nor learned anything

more complex than tying a shoe, but her tone has changed just the same. He

nods and she smiles tentatively at him. He reaches for the cigarettes on the

bedtable. As she draws on her panties, he thinks of a line from an old

novelty song: Keep playin' till I shoot through, Blue play your didgeridoo.

'Tie Me Kangaroo Down', by Rolf Harris. He grins. That was a song Johnny

used to sing. It ended, So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,

and that's it hanging on the shed. She hooks her bra and begins buttoning

her blouse. 'What are you smiling about, Chico?'

'Nothing,' he says. 'Zip me up?'

He goes to her, still naked, and zips her up. He kisses her cheek. 'Go on

in the bathroom and do your face if you want,' he says. 'Just don't take too

long, okay?'

She goes up the hall gracefully, and Chico watches her, smoking. She is a

tall girl-taller than he-and she has to duck her head a little going through the

bathroom door. Chico finds his underpants under the bed. He puts them in

the dirty clothes bag hanging just inside the closet door, and gets another

pair from the bureau. He puts them on, and then, while walking back to the

bed, he slips and almost falls in a patch of wetness the square of cardboard

has let in.

'Goddam,' he whispers resentfully.

He looks around at the room, which had been Johnny's until Johnny died

(why did I tell her he was in the Army, for Christ's sake! he wonders a

little uneasily). Fibreboard walls, so thin he can hear Dad and Virginia

going at it at night, that don't quite make it all the way to the ceiling. The

floor has a slightly crazy hipshot angle so that the room's door will only

stay open if you block it open-if you forget, it swings stealthily closed as

soon as your back is turned. On the far wall is a movie poster from Easy

Rider-Two Men Went Looking for America and Couldn't Find it Anywhere.

The room had more life when Johnny lived here. Chico doesn't know how

or why, only that it's true. And he knows something else, as well. He knows

that sometimes the room spooks him at night.

Sometimes he thinks that the closet door will swing open and Johnny will

be standing there, his body charred and twisted and blackened, his teeth

yellow dentures poking out of wax that has partially melted and re-

hardened; and Johnny will be whispering: Get out of my room, Chico. And

if you lay a hand on my Dodge, I'll fuckin' kill you. Got it?

Got it, bro, Chico thinks.

For a moment he stands still, looking at the rumpled sheet spotted with

the girl's blood, and then he spreads the blankets up in one quick gesture.

Here. Right here. How do you like that, Virginia? How does that grab your

snatch? He puts on his pants, his engineer boots, finds a sweater.

He's dry-combing his hair in front of the mirror when she comes out of

the John. She looks classy. Her too-soft stomach doesn't show in the jumper.

She looks at the bed, does a couple of things to it, and it comes out looking

made instead of just spread up.

'Good,' Chico says.

She laughs a little self-consciously and pushes a lock of hair behind her

ear. It is an evocative, poignant gesture.

'Let's go,' he says.

They go out through the hall and the living room. Jane pauses in front of

the tinted studio photograph on top of the TV. It shows his father and

Virginia, a high-school-age Johnny, a grammar-school-age Chico, and an

infant Billy -in the picture, Johnny is holding Billy.

All of them have fixed, stoned grins all except Virginia, whose face is

its sleepy, indecipherable self. That picture, Chico remembers, was taken

less than a month after his Dad married the bitch.

That your mother and father?'

'It's my father,' Chico said. 'She's my step-mother, Virginia. Come on.'

'Is she still that pretty?' Jane asks, picking up her coat and handing Chico

his windbreaker.

'I guess my old man thinks so,' Chico says.

They step out into the shed. It's a damp and draughty place-the wind

hoots through the cracks in its slapstick walls. There is a pile of old bald

tyres, Johnny's old bike that Chico inherited when he was ten and which he

promptly wrecked, a pile of detective magazines, returnable Pepsi bottles, a

greasy monolithic engine block, an orange crate full of paperback books, an

old paint-by-the-numbers of a horse standing on dusty green grass.

Chico helps her pick her way outside. The rain is falling with

disheartening steadiness.

Chico's old sedan stands in a driveway puddle, looking downhearted.

Even up on blocks and with a red piece of plastic covering the place where

the windshield should go, Johnny's Dodge has more class. Chico's car is a

Buick. The paint is dull and flowered with spots of rust. The front seat

upholstery has been covered with a brown Army Blanket. A large button

pinned to the sun visor on the passenger side says: I WANT IT EVERY

DAY. There is a rusty starter assembly on the back seat; if it ever stops

raining he will clean it, he thinks, and maybe put it into the Dodge. Or

maybe not The Buick smells musty and his own starter grinds a long time

before the Buick starts up.

'Is it your battery?' she asks.

'Just the goddam rain, I guess.' He backs out onto the road, flicking on

the windshield wipers and pausing for a moment to look at the house. It is a

completely unappetizing aqua colour. The shed sticks off from it at a ragtag,

double-jointed angle, tarpaper and peeled -looking shingles.

The radio comes on with a blare and Chico shuts it off at once. There is

the beginning of a Sunday afternoon headache behind his forehead. They

ride past the Grange hall and the Volunteer Fire Department and Brownie's

Store. Sally Morrison's T-Bird is parked by Brownie's hi-test pump, and

Chico raises a hand to her as he turns off onto the old Lewiston road.

'Who's that?'

'Sally Morrison.'

'Pretty lady.' Very neutral.

He feels for his cigarettes. 'She's been married twice and divorced twice.

Now she's the town pump, if you believe half the talk that goes on in this

shitass little town.'

'She looks young.'

'She is.'

'Have you ever -'

He slides his hand up her leg and smiles. 'No,' he says. 'My brother,

maybe, but not me. I like Sally, though. She's got her alimony and her big

white Bird, and she doesn't care what people say about her.'

It starts to seem like a long drive. The Androscoggin, off to the right, is

slaty and sullen.

The ice is all out of it now. Jane has grown quiet and thoughtful. The

only sound is the steady snap of the windshield wipers. When the car rolls

through the dips in the road there is groundfog, waiting for evening when it

will creep out of these pockets and take over the whole River Road.

They cross into Auburn and Chico drives the cutoff and swings onto

Minot Avenue. The four lanes are nearly deserted, and all the suburban

homes look

packaged. They see one little boy in a yellow plastic raincoat walking up

the sidewalk, carefully stepping in all the puddles.

'Go, man,' Chico says softly.

'What?'Jane asks.

'Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep.'

She laughs a little doubtfully.

Chico turns up Keston Street and into the driveway of one of the

packaged houses. He doesn't turn off the ignition. 'Come in and I'll give you

cookies,' she says. He shakes his head. 'I have to get back.'.

'I know.' She puts her arms around him and kisses him. "Thank you for

the most wonderful time of my life.'

He smiles suddenly. His face shines. It is nearly magical. 'I'll see you

Monday, Janey-Jane. Still friends, right?'

'You know we are,' she says, and kisses him again but when he cups a

breast through her jumper, she pulls away. 'Don't. My father might see.'

He lets her go, only a little of the smile left. She gets out of the car

quickly and runs through the rain to the back door. A second later she's

gone. Chico pauses for a moment to light a cigarette and then he backs out

of the driveway. The Buick stalls and the starter seems to grind forever

before the engine manages to catch. It is a long ride home. When he gets

there, Dad's station wagon is parked in the driveway. He pulls in beside it

and lets the engine die. For a moment he sits inside silently, listening to the

rain. It is like being inside a steel drum.

Inside, Billy is watching Carl Stormer and his Country Buckaroos on the

TV set When Chico comes in, Billy jumps up, excited. 'Eddie, hey Eddie,

you know what Uncle Pete said? He said him and a whole mess of other

guys sank a Kraut sub in the war! Will you take me to the show next

Saturday?'

'I don't know,' Chico says, grinning. 'Maybe if you kiss my shoes every

night before supper all week.' He pulls Billy's hair. Billy hollers and laughs

and kicks him in the shins. 'Cut it out, now,' Sam May says, coming into the

room. 'Cut it out you two. You know how your mother feels about the

roughhousing.' He has pulled his tie down and unbuttoned the top button of

his shirt. He's got a couple -three red hotdogs on a plate. The hotdogs are

wrapped in white bread, and Sam May has put the old mustard right to

them. 'Where you been, Eddie?'

'At Jane's.'

The toilet flushes in the bathroom. Virginia. Chico wonders briefly if

Jane has left any hairs in the sink, or a lipstick, or a bobby pin.

'You should have come with us to see your Uncle Pete and Aunt Ann,' his

father says. He eats a frank in three quick bites. 'You're getting to be like a

stranger around here, Eddie. I don't like that. Not while we provide the bed

and board.'

'Some bed,' Chico says. 'Some board.'

Sam looks up quickly, hurt at first, then angry. When he speaks, Chico

sees that his teeth are yellow with French's mustard. He feels vaguely

nauseated. 'Your lip. Your goddam lip. You aren't too big yet, snotnose.'

Chico shrugs, peels a slice of Wonder Bread off the loaf standing on the

TV tray by his father's chair, and spreads it with ketchup. 'In three months

I'm going to be gone anyway.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'I'm gonna fix up Johnny's car and go out to California. Look for work.'

'Oh yeah. Right.' He is a big man, big in a shambling way, but Chico

thinks now that he got smaller after he married Virginia, and smaller again

after Johnny died.

And in his mind he hears himself saying to Jane: My brother, maybe. Not

me. And on the heels of that: Play your didgeridoo, Blue. 'You ain't never

going to get that car as far as Castle Rock, let alone Canada.'

'You don't think so? Just watch my fucking dust.'

For a moment his father only looks at him and then he throws the frank

he has been holding. It hits Chico in the chest, spraying mustard on his

sweater and on the chair. 'Say that word again and I'll break your nose for

you, smartass.'

Chico picks up the frank and looks at it. Cheap red frank, smeared with

French's mustard. Spread a little sunshine. He throws it back at his father.

Sam gets up, his face the colour of an old brick, the vein in the middle of

his forehead pulsing. His thigh connects with the TV tray and it overturns.

Billy stands in the kitchen doorway watching them. He's gotten himself a

plate of franks and beans and the plate has tipped and bean-juice runs onto

the floor. Billy's eyes are wide, his mouth trembling. On the TV, Carl

Stormer and his Country Buckaroos are tearing through Long Black Veil at

a breakneck pace. 'You raise them up best you can and they spit on you,' his

father says thickly. 'Ayuh. That's how it goes. He gropes blindly on the seat

of his chair and comes up with the half-eaten hotdog. He holds it in his fist

like a severed phallus. Incredibly, he begins to eat it at the same time,

Chico sees that he has begun to cry. 'Ayuh, they spit on you, that's just how

it goes.'

'Well, why in the hell did you have to marry her?' he bursts out, and then

has to bite down on the rest of it: If you hadn't married her, Johnny would

still be alive. 'That's none of your goddam business!' Sam May roars

through his tears. "That's my business!'

'Oh?' Chico shouts back. 'Is that so? I only have to live with her! Me and

Billy, we have to live with her! Watch her grind you down! And you don't

even know -'

'What?' his father says, and his voice is suddenly low and ominous. The

chunk of hotdog left in his closed fist is like a bloody chunk of bone. 'What

don't I know?'

'You don't know shit from Shinola,' he says, appalled at what has almost

come out of his mouth.

'You want to stop it now,' his father says. 'Or I'll beat the hell out of you,

Chico.' He only calls him this when he is very angry indeed.

Chico turns and sees that Virginia is standing at the other side of the

room, adjusting her skirt minutely, looking at him with her large, calm,

brown eyes. Her eyes are beautiful; the rest of her is not so beautiful, so

self-renewing, but those eyes will carry her for years yet, Chico thinks, and

he feels the sick hate come back -So we tanned his hide when he died,

Clyde, and that's it hanging on the shed.

'She's got you pussywhipped and you don't have the guts to do anything

about it!' All of this shouting has finally become too much for Billy -he

gives a great wail of terror, drops his plate of franks and beans, and covers

his face with his hands. Bean-juice splatters his Sunday shoes and sprays

across the rug.

Sam takes a single step forward and then stops when Chico makes a curt

beckoning gesture, as if to say: Yeah, come on, let's get down to it, what

took you sofuckin long? They stand like statues until Virginia speaks-her

voice is low, as calm as her brown eyes.

'Have you had a girl in your room, Ed? You know how your father and I

feel about that.' Almost as an afterthought: 'She left a handkerchief.'

He stares at her, savagely unable to express the way he feels, the way she

is dirty, the way she shoots unerringly at the back, the way she clips in

behind you and cuts at your hamstrings.

You could hurt me if you wanted to, the calm brown eyes say. I know you

know what was going on before he died. But that's the only way you can

hurt me, isn't it, Chico? And only then if your father believed you. And if he

believed you, it would kill him.

His father lunges at the new gambit like a bear. 'Have you been screwing

in my house, you little bastard?'

'Watch your language, please, Sam,' Virginia says calmly.

'Is that why you didn't want to come with us? So you could scr-so you

could -'

'Say it!' Chico weeps. 'Don't let her do it to you! Say it! Say what you

mean!'

'Get out,' he says dully. 'Don't you come back until you can apologize to

your mother and me.'

'Don't you dare!' he cries. 'Don't you dare call that bitch my mother! I'll

kill

you!'

'Stop it, Eddie!' Billy screams. The words are muffled, blurred, through

his hands, which still cover his face. 'Stop yelling at daddy! Stop it, please!'

Virginia doesn't move from the doorway. Her calm eyes remain on Chico.

Sam blunders back a step and the back of his knees strike the edge of his

easy-chair. He sits down in it heavily and averts his face against a hairy

forearm. 'I can't even look at you when you got words like that in your

mouth, Eddie. You are making me feel so bad.'

'She makes you feel bad! Why won't you admit it?'

He does not reply. Still not looking at Chico, he fumbles another frank

wrapped in bread from the plate on the TV tray. He fumbles for the

mustard. Billy goes on crying. Carl Stormer and his Country Buckaroos are

singing a truck-driving song. 'My rig is old, but that don't mean she's slow,'

Carl tells all his western Maine viewers.

'The boy doesn't know what he's saying, Sam,' Virginia says gently. 'It's

hard, at his age. It's hard to grow up.'

She's whipped him. That's the end, all right.

He turns and heads for the door which leads first into the shed and then

outdoors. As he opens it he looks back at Virginia, and she gazes at him

tranquilly when he speaks her name.

'What is it, Ed?'

"The sheets are bloody.' He pauses. 'I broke her in.'

He thinks something has stirred in her eyes, but that is probably only his

wish. 'Please go now, Ed. You're scaring Billy.'

He leaves. The Buick doesn't want to start and he has almost resigned

himself to walking in the rain when the engine finally catches. He lights a

cigarette and backs out onto 14, slamming the clutch back in and racing the

mill when it starts to jerk and splutter. The generator light blinks balefully

at him twice, and then the car settles into a rugged die. At last he is on his

way, creeping up the road towards Gates Falls.

He spares Johnny's Dodge one last look.

Johnny could have had steady work at Gates Mills & Weaving, but only

on the night shift. Nightwork didn't bother him, he had told Chico, and the

pay was better than at the Plains, but their father worked days, and working

nights at the mill would have meant Johnny would have been home with

her, home alone or with Chico in the next room and the walls were thin. I

can't stop and she won't let me try, Johnny said. Yeah, I know what it would

do to him. But she's she just won't stop and it's like I

can't stop she's always at me, you know what I mean, you've seen her,

Billy's too young to understand, but you've seen her

Yes. He had seen her. And Johnny had gone to work at the Plains, telling

their father it was because he could get parts for the Dodge on the cheap.

And that's how it happened that he had been changing a tire when the

Mustang came skidding and skating across the infield with its muffler

dragging up sparks; that was how his stepmother had killed his brother, so

just keep playing until I shoot through, Blue, 'cause we goin Stud City right

here in this shitheap Buick, and he remembers how the rubber smelled, and

how the knobs of Johnny's spine cast small crescent shadows on the bright

white of his tee-shirt, he remembers seeing Johnny get halfway up from the

squat he had been working in when the Mustang hit him, squashing him

between it and the Chevy, and there had been a hollow bang as the Chevy

came down off its jacks, and then the bright yellow flare of flame, the rich

smell of gasoline-Chico strikes the brakes with both feet, bringing the sedan

to a crunching, juddering halt on the sodden shoulder. He leans widely

across the seat, throws open the passenger door, and sprays yellow puke

onto the mud and snow. The sight of it makes him puke again, and the

thought of it makes him dry-heave one more time. The car almost stalls, but

he catches it in time. The generator light winks out reluctantly when he

guns the engine. He sits, letting the shakes work their way out of him. A car

goes by fast, a new Ford, white, throwing up great dirty fans of water and

slush. 'Stud City,' Chico says. 'In his new stud car. Funky.'

He tastes puke on his lips and in his throat and coating his sinuses. He

doesn't want a cigarette. Danny Carter will let him sleep over. Tomorrow

will be time enough for further decisions. He pulls back into Route 14 and

gets rolling.

Pretty fucking melodramatic, right?

The world has seen one or two better stories, I know that -one or two

hundred thousand better ones, more like it. It ought to have THIS IS A

PRODUCT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING

WORKSHOP stamped on every page because that's just what it was, at

least up to a certain point. It seems both painfully derivative and painfully

sophomoric to me now; style by Hemingway (except we've got the whole

thing in the present tense for some reason-how too fucking trendy), theme

by Faulkner. Could anything be more serious! More lit'ry?

But even its pretensions can't hide the fact that it's an extremely sexual

story written by an extremely inexperienced young man (at the time I wrote

Stud City, I had been to bed with two girls and had ejaculated prematurely

all over one of them-not much like Chico in the foregoing tale, I guess). Its

attitude towards women goes beyond hostility and to a point which verges

on actual ugliness-two of the women in Stud City are sluts, and the third is

a simple receptacle who says things like 'I love you, Chico,' and 'Come in,

I'll give you cookies.' Chico, on the other hand, is a macho cigarette-

smoking working-class hero who could have stepped whole and breathing

from the grooves of a Bruce Springsteen record-although Springsteen was

yet to be heard from when I published the story in the college literary

magazine (where it ran

between a poem called Images of Me and an essay on student parietals

written entirely in the lower case). It is the work of a young man every bit

as insecure as he was inexperienced. And yet it was the first story I ever

wrote that felt like my story-the first one that really felt whole, after five

years of trying. The first one that might still be able to stand up, even with

its props taken away. Ugly but alive. Even now when I read it, stifling a

smile at its pseudo-toughness and its pretensions, I can see the true face of

Gordon Lachance lurking just behind the lines of print, a Gordon Lachance

younger than the one living and writing now, one certainly more idealistic

than the best-selling novelist who is more apt to have his paperback

contracts reviewed than his books, but not so young as the one who went

with his friends that day to see the body of a dead kid named Ray Brewer. A

Gordon Lachance halfway along in the process of losing the shine. No, it's

not a very good story-its author was too busy listening to other voices to

listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. But it was

the first time I had ever really used the places I knew and the things I felt in

a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing

things that had bothered me for years come out in a new form, a form over

which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of

Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to

me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it Yet there it is in Stud

City, only slightly changed but controlled.

I've resisted the urge to change it a lot more, to rewrite it, to juice it up-

and that urge was fairly strong, because I find the story quite embarrassing

now. But there are still things in it I like, things that would be cheapened by

changes made by this later Lachance, who has the first threads of grey in his

hair. Things, like that image of the shadows on Johnny's white tee-shirt or

that of the rain-ripples on Jane's naked body, that seem better than they have

any right to be.

Also, it was the first story I never showed to my mother and father. There

was too much Denny in it. Too much Castle Rock. And most of all, too

much 1960. You always know the truth, because when you cut yourself or

someone else with it, you bleed.

My room was on the second floor, and it must have been at least ninety

degrees up there.

It would be a hundred and ten by afternoon, even with all the windows

open. I was really glad I wasn't sleeping there that night, and the thought of

where we were going made me excited all over again. I made two blankets

into a bedroll and tied it with my old belt. I collected all my money, which

was sixty-eight cents. Then I was ready to go.

I went down the back stairs to avoid meeting my Dad in front of the

house, but I hadn't needed to worry; he was still out in the garden with the

hose, making useless rainbows in the air and looking through them.

I walked down Summer Street and cut through a vacant lot to Carbine-

where the offices of the Castle Call stand today. I was headed up Carbine

towards the clubhouse when a car pulled over to the kerb and Chris got out.

He had his old Boy

Scout pack in one hand and two blankets rolled up and tied with

clothesrope in the other.

'Thanks, mister,' he said, and trotted over to join me as the car pulled

away. His Boy Scout canteen was slung around his neck and under one arm

so that it finally ended up banging on his hip. His eyes were sparkling.

'Gordie! You wanna see something?'

'Sure, I guess so. What?'

'Come on down here first.' He pointed at the narrow space between the

Blue Point Diner and the Castle Rock Drug Store.

'What is it, Chris?'

'Come on, I said!'

He ran down the alley and after a brief moment (that's all it took me to

cast aside my better judgment) I ran after him. The two buildings were set

slightly towards each other rather than running parallel, and so the alley

narrowed as it went back. We waded through trashy drifts of old

newspapers and stepped over cruel, sparkly nests of broken beer and soda

bottles. Chris cut behind the Blue Point and put his bedroll down. There

were eight or nine garbage cans lined up here and the stench was incredible.

'Phew! Christ Come on, gimme a break!'

'Gimme your arm,' Chris said, by rote.

'No, sincerely, I'm gonna throw u -'

The words broke off in my mouth and I forgot all about the smelly

garbage cans. Chris had unslung his pack and opened it and reached inside.

Now he was holding out a huge pistol with dark wood grips.

'You wanna be the Lone Ranger or the Cisco Kid?' Chris asked, grinning.

'Walking, talking Jesus! Where'd you get that?'

'Hawked it out of my dad's bureau. It's a.45.'

'Yeah, I can see that,' I said, although it could have been a.38 or a.357 for

all I knew-in spite of all the John D MacDonalds and Ed McBains I'd read,

the only pistol I'd ever seen up close was the one Constable Bannerman

carried and although all the kids asked him to take it out of its holster,

Banner never would. 'Man, your dad's gonna hide you when he finds out.

You said he was on a mean streak anyway.'

His eyes just went on dancing. 'That's it, man. He ain't gonna find out

nothing. Him and these other rummies are all laid up down in Harrison with

six or eight bottles of wine. They won't be back for a week. Fucking

rummies.' His lips curled. He was the only guy in our gang who would

never take a drink, even to show he had, you know, big balls. He said he

wasn't going to grow up to be a fucking tosspot like his old man. And he

told me once privately-this was after the DeSpain twins showed up with a

six-pack they'd hawked from their old man and everybody teased Chris

because he wouldn't take a beer or even a swallow-that he was scared to

drink. He said his father never got his nose all the way out of the bottle

anymore, that his older brother had been drunk out of his tits when he raped

that girl, and that Eyeball was always guzzling purple Jesuses with Ace

Merrill and Charlie Hogan and Billy Tessio. What, he asked me, did I think

his chances of letting go of the bottle would be once he picked it up? Maybe

you think that's funny, a twelve-year-old worrying that he might be an

incipient alcoholic, but it wasn't funny to Chris. Not at all. He'd thought

about the possibility a lot. He'd had occasion to.

'You got shells for it?'

'Nine of them-all that was left in the box. He'll think he used 'em himself,

shooting at cans while he was drunk.'

'Is it loaded?'

'No! Chrissake, what do you think I am?'

I finally took the gun. I liked the heavy way it sat there in my hand. I

could see myself as Steve Carella of the 87th precinct, going after that guy

The Heckler or maybe covering Myer Myer or Kling while they broke into

a desperate junkie's sleazy apartment. I sighted on one of the smelly

trashcans and squeezed the trigger. KA-BLAM!

The gun bucked in my hand. Fire licked from the end. It felt as if my

wrist had just been broken. My heart vaulted nimbly into the back of my

mouth and crouched there, trembling. A big hole appeared in the corrugated

metal surface of the trash can-it was the work of an evil conjuror.

'Jesus!' I screamed.

Chris was cackling wildly-in real amusement or hysterical terror I

couldn't tell. 'You did it, you did it! Gordie did it!' He bugled. 'Hey, Gordon

Lachance is shooting up Castle Rock!'

'Shut up! Let's get out of here? I screamed, and grabbed him by the shirt.

As we ran, the back door of the Blue Point jerked open and Francine

Tupper stepped out in her white rayon waitress's uniform. 'Who did that?

Who's letting off cherry-bombs back here?'

We ran like hell, cutting behind the drug store and the hardware store and

the Emporium Galorium, which sold antiques and junk and dime books. We

climbed a fence, spiking our palms with splinters, and finally came out on

Curran Street. I threw the.45 at Chris as we ran; he was killing himself

laughing but caught it and somehow managed to stuff it back into his

knapsack and close one of the snaps. Once around the corner of Curran and

back on Carbine Street, we slowed to a walk so we wouldn't look

suspicious, running in the heat. Chris was still giggling.

'Man, you shoulda seen your face. Oh man, that was priceless. That was

really fine. My fucking-A," He shook his head and slapped his leg and

howled.

'You knew it was loaded, didn't you? You wet end! I'm gonna be in

trouble. That Tupper babe saw me.'

'Shit, she thought it was a firecracker. Besides, ole Thunderjugs Tupper

can't see past the end of her own nose, you know that she thinks wearing

glasses would spoil her pretty face.'

He put one palm against the small of his back and bumped his hips and

got laughing again.

'Well, I don't care. That was a mean trick, Chris. Really.'

'Come on, Gordie.' He put a hand on my shoulder. 'I didn't know it was

loaded, honest to God, I swear on my mother's name. I just took it out of

my dad's bureau. He always unloads it. He must have been really drunk

when he put it away the last time.'

'You really didn't load it?'

'No sir.'

'You swear it on your mother's name even if she goes to hell for you

telling a

lie?'

'I swear.' He crossed himself and spat, his face as open and repentant as

any choirboy's.

But when we turned into the vacant lot where our treehouse was and we

saw Vern and Teddy sitting on their bedrolls waiting for us, he started to

laugh again. He told them the whole story and after everybody had had their

yucks, Teddy asked him what Chris thought they needed a pistol for.

'Nothin',' Chris said. 'Except we might see a bear. Something like that.

Besides, it's spooky sleeping out at night in the woods.'

Everybody nodded at that. Chris was the biggest toughest guy in our

gang, and he could always get away with saying things like that. Teddy, on

the other hand, would have gotten his ass ragged off if he even hinted he

was afraid of the dark. 'Did you set your tent up in the field?' Teddy asked

Vern. 'Yeah. And I put two turned-on flashlights in it so it'll look like we're

there after dark.'

'Hot shit!' I said, and clapped Vern on the back. For him, that was real

thinking. He grinned and blushed.

'So let's go,' Teddy said. 'Come on, it's almost twelve already!' Chris got

up and we gathered around him.

'We'll walk across Beeman's field and behind that furniture place by

Sonny's Texaco,' he said. 'Then we'll get on the railroad tracks down by the

dump and just walk across the trestle into Harlow.'

'How far do you think it's gonna be?' Teddy asked.

Chris shrugged. 'Harlow's big. We're gonna be walking at least twenty

miles. That sound right to you, Gordie?'

'Yeah. It might even be thirty.'

'Even if it's thirty we ought to be there by tomorrow afternoon, if no one

goes

pussy.'

'No pussies here,' Teddy said at once. We all looked at each other for a

second. 'Miaoww,' Vern said, and we all laughed.

'Come on, you guys,' Chris said, and shouldered his pack. We walked out

of the vacant lot together, Chris slightly in the lead.

By the time we got across Beeman's field and had struggled up the

cindery embankment to the Great Southern and Western Maine tracks, we

had all taken our shirts off and tied them around our waists. We were

sweating like pigs. At the top of the embankment we looked down the

tracks, towards where we'd have to go.

I'll never forget that moment, no matter how old I get. I was the only one

with a watch-a cheap Timex I'd gotten as a premium for selling Cloverine

Brand Salve the year before.

Its hands stood at straight up noon, and the sun beat down on the dry,

shadeless vista before us with savage heat. You could feel it working to get

in under your skull and fry your brains.

Behind us was Castle Rock spread out on the long hill that was known as

Castle View, surrounding its green and shady common. Further down Castle

River you could see the stacks of the woollen mill spewing smoke into a

sky the colour of gunmetal and spewing waste into the water. The Jolly

Furniture Barn was on our left And straight ahead of us the railroad tracks,

bright and heliographing in the sun. They paralleled the Castle River, which

was on our left. To our right was a lot of overgrown scrubland (there's a

motorcycle track there today-they have scrambles every Sunday afternoon

at two p. m.).

An old abandoned water tower stood on the horizon, rusty and somehow

scary.

We stood there for that one noontime moment and then Chris said

impatiently, 'Come on, let's get going.'

We walked beside the tracks in the cinders, kicking up little puffs of

blackish dust at every step. Our socks and sneakers were soon gritty with it.

Vern started singing 'Roll Me Over in the Clover' but soon quit it, which

was a break for our ears. Only Teddy and Chris had brought canteens, and

we were all hitting them pretty hard.

'We could fill all the canteens again at the dump faucet,' I said. 'My dad

told me that's a safe well. It's a hundred and ninety feet deep.'

'Okay,' Chris said, being the tough platoon leader. 'That'll be a good place

to take five, anyway.'

'What about food?' Teddy asked suddenly. 'I bet nobody thought to bring

something to eat I know I didn't'

Chris stopped. 'Shit! I didn't, either. Gordie?' I shook my head, wondering

how I could have been so dumb. 'Vern?'

'Zip,' Vern said. 'Sorry.'

'Well, let's see how much money we got,' I said. I untied my shirt, spread

it on the cinders, and dropped my own sixty-eight cents onto it. The coins

glittered feverishly in the sunlight. Chris had a tattered dollar and two

pennies. Teddy had two quarters and two nickels. Vern had exactly seven

cents.

'Two-thirty-seven,' I said. 'Not bad. There's a store at the end of that little

road that goes to the dump. Somebody'!! have to walk down there and get

some hamburger and some tonics while the others rest.'

'Who?' Vern asked.

'We'll match for it when we get to the dump. Come on.'

I slid all the money into my pants pocket and was just tying my shirt

around my waist again when Chris hollered: 'Train!'

I put my hand out on one of the rails to feel it, even though I could

already hear it. The rail was thrumming crazily; for a moment it was like

holding the train in my hand. 'Paratroops over the side!' Vern bawled, and

leapt halfway down the embankment in one crazy, clownish stride. Vern

was nuts for playing paratroops anyplace the ground was soft- a gravel pit,

a haymow, an embankment like this one. Chris jumped after him. The train

was really loud now, probably headed straight up our side of the river

towards Lewiston. Instead of jumping, Teddy turned in the direction of

which it was coming. His thick glasses glittered in the sun. His long hair

flopped untidily over his brow in sweat-soaked stringers. 'Go on, Teddy,' I

said.

'No, huh-uh, I'm gonna dodge it' He looked at me, his magnified eyes

frantic with excitement. 'A train-dodge, dig it? What's trucks after a fuckin'

train-dodge?'

'You're crazy, man. You want to get killed?'

'Just like the beaches at Normandy!' Teddy yelled, and strode out into the

middle of the tracks. He stood on one of the cross-ties, lightly balanced.

I stood stunned for a moment, unable to believe stupidity of such width

and breadth. Then I grabbed him, dragged him fighting and protesting to the

embankment, and pushed him over. I jumped after him and Teddy caught

me a good one in the guts while I was still in the air. The wind whooshed

out of me, but I was still able to hit him in the sternum with my knee and

knock him flat on his back before he could get all the way up. I landed,

gasping and sprawling, and Teddy grabbed me around the

neck. We went rolling all the way to the bottom of the embankment,

hitting and clawing at each other while Chris and Vern stared at us, stupidly

surprised.

'You little son of a bitch!' Teddy was screaming at me. 'You fucker! Don't

you throw your weight around on me! I'll kill you, you dipshit!'

I was getting my breath back now, and I made it to my feet. I backed

away as Teddy advanced, holding my open hands up to slap away his

punches, half laughing and half scared. Teddy was no one to fool around

with when he went into one of his screaming fits. He'd take on a big kid in

that state, and after the big kid broke both of his arms, he'd bite.

'Teddy, you can dodge anything you want after we see what we're going

to see but' whack on the shoulder as one wildly-swinging fist got past me

'until then no one's supposed to see us, you' whack on the side of the face,

and then we might have had a real fight if Chris and Vern 'stupid wet end!'

hadn't grabbed us and kept us apart. Above us, the train roared by in a

thunder of diesel exhaust and the great heavy clacking of boxcar wheels. A

few cinders bounced down the embankment and the argument was over at

least until we could hear ourselves talk again.

It was only a short freight, and when the caboose had trailed by, Teddy

said: 'I'm gonna kill him. At least give him a fat lip.' He struggled against

Chris, but Chris only grabbed him tighter.

'Calm down, Teddy,' Chris said quietly, and he kept saying it until Teddy

stopped struggling and just stood there, his glasses hanging askew and his

hearing-aid cord dangling limply against his chest on its way down to the

battery, which he had shoved into the pocket of his jeans.

When he was completely still, Chris turned to me and said: 'What the hell

are you fighting with him about, Gordon?'

'He wanted to dodge the train. I figured the engineer would see him and

report it They might send a cop out.'

'Ahhh, he'd be too busy makin' chocolate in his drawers,' Teddy said, but

he didn't seem angry anymore. The storm had passed.

'Gordie was just trying to do the right thing,' Vern said. 'Come on, peace.'

'Peace, you guys,' Chris agreed.

'Yeah, okay,' I said, and held out my hand, palm up. 'Peace, Teddy?'

'I coulda dodged it,' he said to me. 'You know that, Gordie?'

'Yeah,' I said, although the thought turned me cold inside. 'I know it.'

'Okay. Peace, then.'

'Skin it, man,' Chris ordered, and let go of Teddy.

Teddy slapped his hand down on mine hard enough to sting and then

turned it over. I slapped his.

'Fucking pussy Lachance,' Teddy said.

'Meeiowww,' I said.

'Come on, you guys,' Vern said. 'Let's go, okay?'

'Go anywhere you want, but don't go here,' Chris said solemnly, and Vern

drew back as if to hit him.

We got to the dump around one-thirty, and Vern led the way down the

embankment with a Paratroops over the side! We went to the bottom in big

jumps and leaped over the brackish trickle of water oozing listlessly out of

the culvert which pocked out of the cinders. Beyond this small boggy area

was the sandy, trash-littered verge of the dump.

There was a six-foot security fence surrounding it. Every twenty feet

weather-faded signs were posted. They said: CASTLE ROCK DUMP

HOURS 4-8 PM CLOSED MONDAYS TRESPASSING STRICTLY

FORBIDDEN We climbed to the top of the fence, swung over, and jumped

down. Teddy and Vern led the way towards the well, which you tapped with

an old-fashioned pump-the kind from which you had to call the water with

elbow-grease. There was a Crisco can filled with water next to the pump

handle, and the great sin was to forget to leave it filled for the next guy to

come along. The iron handle stuck off at an angle, looking like a one-

winged bird that was trying to fly. It had once been green, but almost all of

the paint had been rubbed off by the thousands of hands that had worked

that handle since 1940. The dump is one of my strongest memories of

Castle Rock. It always reminds me of the surrealist painters when I think of

it-those fellows who were always painting pictures of clockfaces lying

limply in the crotches of trees or Victorian living rooms standing in the

middle of the Sahara or steam engines coming out of fireplaces. To my

child's eye, nothing in the Castle Rock Dump looked as if it really belonged

there. We had entered from the back. If you came from the front, a wide dirt

road came in through the gate, broadened out into a semicircular area that

had been bulldozed as flat as a dirt landing-strip, and then ended abruptly at

the edge of the dumping-pit. The pump (Teddy and Vern were currently

standing there and squabbling about who was going to prime it) was at the

back of this great pit It was maybe eighty feet deep and filled with all the

American things that get empty, wear out, or just don't work anymore.

There was so much stuff that my eyes hurt just looking at it-or maybe it was

your brain that actually hurt, because it could never quite decide what your

eye should stop on. Then your eye would stop, or be stopped, by something

that seemed as out of place as those limp clock-faces or the living room in

the desert. A brass bedstead leaning drunkenly in the sun. A little girl's

dolly looking amazedly between her thighs as she gave birth to stuffing. An

overturned Studebaker automobile with its chrome bullet nose glittering in

the sun like some Buck Rogers missile. One of those giant water bottles

they have in office buildings, transformed by the summer sun into a hot,

blazing sapphire.

There was plenty of wildlife there, too, although it wasn't the kind you

see in the Walt Disney nature films or at those tame zoos where you can pet

the animals. Plump rats, woodchucks grown sleek and lumbering on such

rich chow as rotting hamburger and maggoty vegetables, seagulls by the

thousands, and stalking among the gulls like thoughtful, introspective

ministers, an occasional huge crow. It was also the place where the town's

stray dogs came for a meal when they couldn't find any trashcans to knock

over or any deer to run. They were a miserable, ugly-tempered, mongrel lot;

slat-sided and grinning bitterly, they would attack each other over a

flyblown piece of bologna or a pile of chicken guts fuming in the sun.

But these dogs never attacked Milo Pressman, the dump-keeper, because

Milo was never without Chopper at his heel. Chopper was-at least until

Camber's dog Cujo went rabid twenty years later-the most feared and least

seen dog in Castle Rock. He was the meanest dog for forty miles around (or

so we heard), and ugly enough to stop a striking clock. The kids whispered

legends about Chopper's meanness. Some said he was half German

Shepherd, some said he was mostly Boxer, and a kid from Castle

View with the unfortunate name of Harry Horr claimed that Chopper was

a Doberman Pinscher whose vocal cords had been surgically removed so

you couldn't hear him when he was on the attack. There were other kids

who claimed Chopper was a maniacal Irish Wolfhound and Milo Pressman

fed him a special mixture of Gaines Meal and chicken blood. These same

kids claimed that Milo didn't dare take Chopper out of his shack unless the

dog was hooded like a hunting falcon.

The most common story was that Pressman had trained Chopper not just

to sic but to sic specific parts of the human anatomy. Thus an unfortunate

kid who had illegally scaled the dump fence to pick for illicit treasures

might hear Milo Pressman cry: 'Chopper! Sic! Hand!' And Chopper would

grab that hand and hold on, ripping skin and tendons, powdering bones

between his slavering jaws, until Milo told him to quit. It was rumoured that

Chopper could take an ear, an eye, a foot, or a leg and that a second

offender who was surprised by Milo and the ever-loyal Chopper would hear

the dread cry: 'Chopper! Sic! Pecker!' And that kid would be a soprano for

the rest of his life. Milo himself was more commonly seen and thus more

commonly regarded. He was just a half-bright working joe who

supplemented his small town salary by fixing things people threw away and

selling them around town. There was no sign of either Milo or Chopper

today.

Chris and I watched Vern prime the pump while Teddy worked the

handle frantically. At last he was rewarded with a flood of clear water. A

moment later both of them had their heads under the trough, Teddy still

pumping away a mile a minute. 'Teddy's crazy,' I said softly.

'Oh yeah,' Chris said matter-of-factly. 'He won't live to be twice the age

he is now, I bet. His dad burnin' his ears like that. That's what did it. He's

crazy to dodge trucks the way he does. He can't see worth a shit, glasses or

no glasses.'

'You remember that time in the tree?'

'Yeah.'

The year before, Teddy and Chris had been climbing the big pine tree

behind my house. They were almost to the top and Chris said they couldn't

go any further because all of the branches up there were rotten. Teddy got

that crazy stubborn look on his face and said fuck that, he had pine tar all

over his hands and he was gonna go up until he could touch the top.

Nothing Chris said could talk him out of it. So up he went, and he actually

made it-he only weighed seventy-five pounds or so, remember. He stood

there, clutching the top of the pine in one tar-gummy hand, shouting that he

was king of the world or some stupid thing like that, and then there was a

sickening, rotted crack as the branch he was standing on gave way and he

plummeted. What happened next was one of those things that makes you

sure there must be a God. Chris reached out, purely on reflex, and what he

caught was a fistful of Teddy Duchamp's hair. And although his wrist

swelled up fat and he was unable to use his right hand very well for almost

two weeks, Chris held him until Teddy, screaming and cursing, got his foot

on a live branch thick enough to support his weight. Except for Chris's blind

grab, he would have turned and crashed and smashed all the way to the foot

of the tree, a hundred and twenty feet below. When they got down, Chris

was grey-faced and almost puking with the fear reaction. And Teddy

wanted to fight him for pulling his hair. They would have gone at it, too, if I

hadn't been there to make peace.

'I dream about that every now and then,' Chris said, and looked at me

with strangely defenceless eyes. 'Except in this dream I have, I always miss

him. I just get a couple of hairs and Teddy screams and down he goes.

Weird, huh?'

'Weird,' I agreed, and for just one moment we looked in each other's eyes

and saw some of the true things that made us friends. Then we looked away

again and watched Teddy and Vern throwing water at each other, screaming

and laughing and calling each other pussies.

'Yeah, but you didn't miss him,' I said. 'Chris Chambers never misses, am

right?'

'Not even when the ladies leave the seat down,' he said. He winked at me,

formed an O with his thumb and forefinger, and spat a neat white bullet

through it.

'Eat me raw, Chambers,' I said.

'Through a Flavour Straw,' he said, and we grinned at each other.

Vern yelled: 'Come on and get your water before it runs back down the

piper.'

'Race you,' Chris said.

'In this heat? You're off your gourd.'

'Come on,' he said, still grinning. 'On my go.'

'Okay.'

'Go!'

We raced, our sneakers digging up the hard, sunbaked dirt, our torsos

leaning out ahead of our flying bluejeaned legs, our fists doubled. It was a

dead heat, with both Vern on Chris's side and Teddy on mine holding up

their middle fingers at the same moment. We collapsed laughing in the still,

smoky odour of the place, and Chris tossed Vern his canteen. When I was

full, Chris and I went to the pump and first Chris pumped for me and then I

pumped for him, the shockingly cold water sluicing off the soot and the heat

all in a flash, sending our suddenly freezing scalps four months ahead into

January. Then I refilled the lard can and we all walked over to sit down in

the shade of the dump's only tree, a stunted ash forty feet from Milo

Pressman's tarpaper shack. The tree was hunched slightly to the west, as if

what it really wanted to do was pick up its roots the way an old lady would

pick up her skirts and just get the hell out of the dump.

'The most!' Chris said, laughing, tossing his tangled hair back from his

brow.

'A blast,' I said, nodding, still laughing myself.

'This is really a good time,' Vern said simply, and he didn't just mean

being off-limits inside the dump, or fudging our folks, or going on a hike up

the railroad tracks into Harlow; he meant those things but it seems to me

now that there was more, and that we all knew it. Everything was there and

around us. We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were

going. It was grand.

We sat under the tree for a while, shooting the shit like we always did-

who had the best ballteam (still the Yankees with Mantle and Maris, of

course), what was the best car ('55 Thunderbird, with Teddy holding out

stubbornly for the '58 Corvette), who was the toughest guy in Castle Rock

who wasn't in our gang (we all agreed it was Jamie Gallant, who gave Mrs.

Ewing the finger and then sauntered out of her class with his hands in his

pockets while she shouted at him), the best TV show (either The

Untouchables or Peter Gunn-both Robert Stack as Eliot Ness and Craig

Stevens as Gunn were cool), all that stuff.

It was Teddy who first noticed that the shade of the ash tree was getting

longer and asked me what time it was. I looked at my watch and was

surprised to see it was quarter past two.

'Hey, man,' Vern said. 'Somebody's got to go for provisions. Dump opens

at four. I don't want to still be here when Milo and Chopper make the

scene.'

Even Teddy agreed. He wasn't afraid of Milo, who had a pot belly and

was at least forty, but every kid in Castle Rock squeezed his balls between

his legs when Chopper's name was mentioned.

'Okay,' I said. 'Odd man goes?'

That's you, Gordie,' Chris said, smiling. 'Odd as a cod.'

'So's your mother,' I said, and gave them each a coin. 'Flip.'

Four coins glittered up into the sun. Four hands snatched them from the

air. Four flat smacks on four grimy wrists. We uncovered. Two heads and

two tails. We flipped again and this time all four of us had tails.

'Oh Jesus, that's a goocher,' Vern said, not telling us anything we didn't

know. Four heads, or a moon, was supposed to be extraordinarily good

luck. Four tails was a goocher, and that meant very bad luck.

'Fuck that shit,' Chris said. 'It doesn't mean anything. Go again.'

'No, man,' Vern said earnestly. 'A goocher, that's really bad. You

remember when Clint Bracken and those guys got wiped out on Sirois Hill

in Durham? Billy tole me they was flippin' for beers and they came up a

goocher just before they got into the car. And bang! They all get fuckin'

totalled. I don't like that. Sincerely.'

'Nobody believes that crap about moons and goochers,' Teddy said

impatiently. 'It's baby stuff, Vern. You gonna flip or not?'

Vern flipped, but with obvious reluctance. This time he, Chris and Teddy

all had tails. I was showing Thomas Jefferson on a nickle. And I was

suddenly scared. It was as if a shadow had crossed some inner sun. They

still had a goocher, the three of them, as if dumb fate had pointed at them a

second time. Abruptly I thought of Chris saying: I just get a couple of hairs

and Teddy screams and down he goes. Weird, huh?

Three tails, one head.

Then Teddy was laughing his crazy, cackling laugh and pointing at me

and the feeling was gone.

'I heard that only fairies laugh like that,' I said, and gave him the finger.

'Eeee-eeee-eeee, Gordie,' Teddy laughed. 'Go get the provisions, you

fuckin' morphadite.'

I wasn't really sorry to be going. I was rested up and didn't mind going

down the road to the Florida Market.

'Don't call me any of your mother's pet names,' I said to Teddy.

'Eeee-eee-eeee, what a fuckin' wet you are, Lachance.'

'Go on, Gordie,' Chris said. 'We'll wait over by the tracks.'

'You guys better not go without me,' I said.

Vern laughed. 'Goin' without you'd be like goin' with Schlitz instead of

Budweiser's, Gordie.'

'Ah, shut up.'

They chanted together: 'I don't shut up, I grow up. And when I look at

you I throw up.'

'Then your mother goes around the corner and licks it up,' I said, and

hauled ass out of there, giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went. I

never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus,

did you?

Different strokes for different folks, they say now, and that's cool. So if I

say summer to you, you get one set of private, personal images that are all

the way different from mine. That's cool. But for me, summer is always

going to mean running down the road to the Florida Market with change

jingling in my pockets, the temperature in the gay nineties, my feet dressed

in Keds. The word conjures an image of the GS&WM railroad tracks

running into a perspective-point in the distance, burnished so white under

the sun that when you closed your eyes you could still see them there in the

dark, only blue instead of white.

But there was more to that summer than our trip across the river to look

for Ray Brower, although that looms the largest. Sounds of The Fleetwoods

singing 'Come Softly Darling' and Robin Luke singing 'Susie Darlin' and

Little Anthony popping the vocal on 'I Ran All the Way Home'. Were they

all hits in that summer of 1960? Yes and no. Mostly yes. In the long purple

evenings when rock and roll from WLAM blurred into night baseball from

WCCU, time shifted. I think it was all 1960 and that the summer went on

for a space of years, held magically intact in a web of sounds: the sweet

hum of crickets, the machine-gun roar of playing-cards riffling against the

spokes of some kid's bicycle as he pedalled home for a late supper of cold

cuts and iced tea, the flat Texas voice of Buddy Knox singing 'Come along

and be my party doll, and I'll make love to you, to you,' and the baseball

announcer's voice mingling with the song and with the smell of freshly cut

grass: 'Count's three and two now. Whitey Ford leans over shakes off the

sign now he's got it Ford pauses pitches and there it goes! Williams

got all of that one! Kiss it goodbye! RED SOX LEAD, THREE TO ONE!'

Was Ted Williams still playing for the Red Sox in 1960? Absolutely not.

But he was. I remember that he was very clearly. Baseball had become

important to me in the last couple of years, ever since I'd had to face the

knowledge that baseball players were as much flesh and blood as I was. The

knowledge came when Roy Campanella's car overturned and the papers

screamed mortal news from the front pages: his career was done, he was

going to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. How that came back to

me, with that same sickening mortal thud, when I sat down to this

typewriter one morning two years ago, turned on the radio, and heard that

Thurman Munson had died while trying to land his airplane. There were

movies to go see at the Gem, which has long since been torn down; science

fiction movies like Gog with Richard Egan and westerns with Audie

Murphy (Teddy saw every movie Audie Murphy made at least three times;

he believed Murphy was almost a god) and war movies with John Wayne.

There were games and endless bolted meals, lawns to mow, places to run to,

walls to pitch pennies against, people to clap you on the back. And now I sit

here trying to look through an IBM keyboard and see that time, trying to

recall the best and worst of that green and brown summer, and I can almost

feel the skinny, scabbed boy still buried in this advancing body and hear

those sounds. But the apotheosis of the memory and the time is Gordon

Lachance running down the road to the Florida Market with change in his

pockets and sweat running down his back. I asked for three pounds of

hamburger and got some hamburger rolls, four bottles of Coke and a two-

cent churchkey to open them with. The owner, a man named George

Dusset, got the meat and then leaned by his cash register, one hammy hand

planted on the counter by the big bottle of hardcooked eggs, a toothpick in

his mouth, his huge beer belly rounding his white T-shirt like a sail filled

with a good wind. He stood right there as I shopped, making sure I didn't

try to hawk anything. He didn't say a word until he was weighing up the

hamburger.

'I know you. You're Denny Lachance's brother. Ain't you?' The toothpick

journeyed from one corner of his mouth to the other, as if on ball bearings.

He reached behind the cash register, picked up a bottle of S'OK cream soda,

and chugged it.

'Yes, sir. But Denny, he -'

'Yeah, I know. That's a sad thing, kid. The Bible says: "In the midst of

life, we are in death." Did you know that Yuh. I lost a brother in Korea.

You look just like Denny, people ever tell you that? Yuh. Spitting image.'

'Yes, sir, sometimes,' I said glumly.

'I remember the year he was All Conference. Halfback, he played. Yuh.

Could he run? Father God and Sonny Jesus! You're probably too young to

remember.' He was looking over my head, out through the screen door and

into the blasting heat, as if he were having a beautiful vision of my brother.

'I remember. Uh, Mr. Dusset?'

'What, kid?' His eyes were still misty with memory; the toothpick

trembled a little between his lips.

'Your thumb is on that scales.'

'What?' He looked down, astounded, to where the ball of his thumb was

pressed firmly on the white enamel. If I hadn't moved away from him a

little bit when he started talking about Dennis, the ground meat would have

hidden it. 'Why, so it is. Yuh. I guess I just got thinkin' about your brother,

God love him.' George Dusset signed a cross on himself.

When he took his thumb off the scales, the needle sprang back six

ounces. He patted a little more meat on top and then did the package up

with white butcher's paper.

'Okay,' he said past the toothpick. 'Let's see what we got here. Three

pounds of hamburg, that's a dollar forty-four. Hamburg rolls, that's twenty-

seven. Four tonics, forty cents. One churchkey, two pence. Come to' He

added it up on the bag he was going to put the stuff in. 'Two-twenty-nine.'

'Thirteen,' I said.

He looked up at me very slowly, frowning. 'Huh?'

'Two-thirteen. You added it wrong.'

'Kid, are you-'

'You added it wrong,' I said. 'First you put your thumb on the scales and

then you overcharged on the groceries, Mr Dusset I was gonna throw some

Hostess Twinkies on top of that order but now I guess I won't.' I spanged

two dollars and thirteen cents down on the Schlitz placemat in front of him.

He looked at the money, then at me. The frown was now tremendous, the

lines on his face as deep as fissures. 'What are you, kid?' He said in a low

voice that was ominously confidential. 'Are you some kind of smartass?'

'No, sir,' I said. 'But you ain't gonna jap me and get away with it. What

would your mother say if she knew you was japping little kids?'

He thrust our stuff into the paper bag with quick stiff movements, making

the Coke bottles clink together. He thrust the bag at me roughly, not caring

if I dropped it and broke the tonics or not. His swarthy face was flushed and

dull, the frown now frozen in place. 'Okay, kid. Here you go. Now what you

do is you get the Christ out of my store. I see you in here again and I going

to throw you out, me. Yuh. Smartass little sonofawhore.'

'I won't come in again,' I said, walking over to the screen door and

pushing it open. The hot afternoon buzzed somnolently along its appointed

course outside, sounding green and brown and full of silent light. 'Neither

will none of my friends. I guess I got fifty or so.'

'Your brother wasn't no smartass!' George Dusset yelled.

'Fuck you!' I yelled, and ran like hell down the road.

I heard the screen door bang open like a gunshot and his bull roar came

after me: 'If you ever come in here again I'll fat your lip for you, you little

punk!' I ran until I was over the first hill, scared and laughing to myself, my

heart beating out a triphammer pulse in my chest. Then I slowed to a fast

walk, looking back over my shoulder every now and then to make sure he

wasn't going to take after me in his car, or anything.

He didn't, and pretty soon I got to the dump gate. I put the bag inside my

shirt, climbed the gate, and monkeyed down the other side. I was halfway

across the dump area when I saw something I didn't like-Milo Pressman's

portholed '56 Buick was parked behind his tarpaper shack. If Milo saw me,

I was going to be in a world of hurt. As yet there was no sign of either him

or the infamous Chopper, but all at once the chain-link fence at the back of

the dump seemed very far away. I found myself wishing I'd gone around the

outside, but I was now too far into the dump to want to turn around and go

back. If Milo saw me climbing the dump fence, I'd probably be in dutch

when I got home, but that didn't scare me as much as Milo yelling for

Chopper to sic would.

Scary violin music started to play in my head. I kept putting one foot in

front of the other, trying to look casual, trying to look as if I belonged here

with a paper grocery sack poking out of my shirt, heading for the fence

between the dump and the railroad tracks.

I was about fifty feet from the fence and just beginning to think that

everything was going to be all right after all when I heard Milo shout. 'Hey!

Hey, you! Kid! Get away from that fence! Get outta here!'

The smart thing to have done would have been to just agree with the guy

and go around, but then I was so keyed up that instead of doing the smart

thing I just broke for the fence with a wild yell, my sneakers kicking up

dust. Vern, Teddy, and Chris came out of the underbrush on the other side of

the fence and stared anxiously through the chain-link.

'You come back here!' Milo bawled. 'Come back here or I'll sic my dawg

on you, goddammit!' I did not exactly find that to be the voice of sanity and

conciliation, and I ran even faster for the fence, my arms pumping, the

brown grocery bag crackling against my skin. Teddy started to laugh his

idiotic chortling laugh, eee-eee-eeee into the air like some reed instrument

being played by a lunatic.

'Go, Gordie! Go!' Vern screamed.

And Milo yelled: 'Sic 'im, Chopper! Go get 'im, boy!'

I threw the bag over the fence and Vern elbowed Teddy out of the way to

catch it. Behind me I could hear Chopper coming, shaking the earth,

blurting fire out of one distended nostril and ice out of the other, dripping

sulphur from his champing jaws. I threw myself halfway up the fence with

one leap, screaming. I made it to the top in no more than three seconds and

simply leaped. I never thought about it, never even looked down to see what

I might land on. What I almost landed on was Teddy, who was doubled over

and laughing like crazy. His glasses had fallen off and tears were streaming

out of his eyes. I missed him by inches and hit the clay-gravel embankment

just to his left. At the same instant, Chopper hit the chain-link fence behind

me and let out a howl of mingled pain and disappointment. I turned around,

holding one skinned knee, and got my first look at the famous Chopper-

and my first lesson in the vast differences between myth and reality.

Instead of some huge hellhound with red, savage eyes and teeth jutting

out of his mouth like straight-pipes from a hotrod, I was looking at a

medium-sized mongrel dog that was a perfectly common black and white.

He was yapping and jumping fruitlessly, going up on his back legs to paw

the fence.

Teddy was now strutting up and down in front of the fence, twiddling his

glasses in one hand, and inciting Chopper to even greater rage.

'Kiss my ass, Choppie!' Teddy invited, spittle flying from his lips. 'Kiss

my ass! Bite shit!'

He bumped his fanny against the chain-link fence and Chopper did his

level best to take Teddy up on his invitation. He got nothing for his pains

but a good healthy nose-bump.

He began to bark crazily, foam flying from his snout. Teddy kept

bumping his rump against the fence and Chopper kept lunging at it, always

missing, doing nothing but racking out his nose, which was now bleeding.

Teddy kept exhorting him, calling him by the somehow grisly diminutive

'Choppie', and Chris and Vern were lying weakly on the embankment,

laughing so hard that they could now do little more than wheeze.

And here came Milo Pressman, dressed in sweat-stained fatigues and a

New York Giants baseball cap, his mouth drawn down in distracted anger.

'Here, here!' He was yelling. 'You boys stop a-teasing that dawg! You

hear me? Stop it right now!'

'Bite it, Choppie!' Teddy yelled, strutting up and down on our side of the

fence like a mad Prussian reviewing his troops. 'Come on and sic me! Sic

me!''

Chopper went nuts. I mean it sincerely. He ran around in a big circle,

yelping and barking and foaming, rear feet spewing up tough little dry

clods. He went around about three times, getting his courage up, I guess,

and then he lauched himself straight at the security fence. He must have

been going thirty miles an hour when he hit it, I kid you not-his doggy lips

were stretched back from his teeth and his ears were flying in the

slipstream.

The whole fence made a low, musical sound as the chain-link was not

just driven back against the posts but sort of stretched back. It was like a

zither note -yimmmmmmm. A strangled yawp came out of Chopper's

mouth, both eyes came up blank, and he did a totally amazing reverse snap-

roll, landing on his back with a solid thump that sent dust puffing up around

him. He just lay there for a moment and then he crawled off with his tongue

hanging crookedly from the left side of his mouth.

At this, Milo himself went almost berserk with rage. His complexion

darkened to a scary plum colour-even his scalp was purple under the short

hedgehog bristles of his flattop haircut. Sitting stunned in the dirt, both

knees of my jeans torn out, my heart still thudding from the nearness of my

escape, I thought that Milo looked like a human version of Chopper.

'I know you!' Milo raved. 'You're Teddy Duchamp! I know all of you!

Sonny, I'll beat your ass, teasing my dawg like that!'

'Like to see you try!' Teddy raved right back. 'Let's see you climb over

this fence and get me, fatass!'

'WHAT? WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?'

'FAT-ASS!' Teddy screamed happily. 'LARD-BUCKET! TUBBAGUTS!

COME ON! COME 0N!' He was jumping up and down, fists clenched,

sweat flying

from his hair. 'TEACH YOU TO SIC YOUR STUPID DOG ON

PEOPLE! COME ON! LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY!'

'You little tin-weasel pecker wood loony's son! I'll see your mother gets

an invitation to go down and talk to the judge in court about what you done

to my dawg!'

'What did you call me?' Teddy asked hoarsely. He had stopped jumping

up and down. His eyes had gone huge and glassy, and his skin was the

colour of lead.

Milo had called Teddy a lot of things, but he was able to go back and get

the one that had struck home with no trouble at all-since then I have noticed

again and again what a genius people have for that for finding the

LOONY button down side and not just pressing it but hammering on the

fucker.

'Your dad was a loony,' he said, grinning. 'Loony up in Togus, that's what.

Crazier'n a shithouse rat. Crazier'n a buck with tickwood fever. Nuttier'n a

long-tailed cat in a room fulla rockin' chairs. Loony. No wonder you're

actin' the way you are, with a loony for a f-'

'YOUR MOTHER BLOWS DEAD RATS!' Teddy screamed. 'AND IF

YOU CALL MY DAD A LOONY AGAIN, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU,

YOU COCKSUCKER!'

'Loony,' Milo said smugly. He'd found the button, all right. 'Loony's kid,

loony's kid, your father's got toys in the attic, kid, tough break.'

Vern and Chris had been getting over their laughing fit, perhaps getting

ready to appreciate the seriousness of the situation and call Teddy off, but

when Teddy told Milo that his mother blew dead rats, they went back into

hysterics again, lying there on the bank, rolling from side to side, their feet

kicking, holding their bellies. 'No more,' Chris said weakly. 'No more,

please, no more, I swear to God I'm gonna bust!'

Chopper was walking around in a large, dazed figure-eight behind Milo.

He looked like the losing fighter about ten seconds after the ref has ended

the match and awarded the winner a TKO. Meanwhile, Teddy and Milo

continued their discussion of Teddy's father, standing nose to nose, with the

wire fence Milo was too old and too fat to climb between them.

'Don't you say nothing else about my dad! My dad stormed the beaches at

Normandy, you fucking wet end!'

'Yeah, well, where is he now, you ugly little four-eyed turd? He's up to

Togus, ain't he? He's up to Togus because HE WENT FUCKING SECTION

EIGHT!'

'Okay, that's it,' Teddy said. 'That's it, that's the end, I'm gonna kill you.'

He threw himself at the fence and started up.

'You come on and try it, you slimy little bastard.' Milo stood back,

grinning and waiting.

'No!' I shouted. I got to my feet, grabbed Teddy by the loose seat of his

jeans, and pulled him off the fence. We both staggered back and fell over,

him on top. He squashed my balls pretty good and I groaned. Nothing hurts

like having your balls squashed, you know it? But I kept my arms locked

around Teddy's middle.

'Lemme up!' Teddy sobbed, writhing in my arms. 'Lemme up, Gordie!

Nobody ranks out my old man. LEMME UP GODDAMMIT LEMME UP!'

'That's just what he wants!' I shouted in his ear. 'He wants to get you over

there and beat the piss out of you and then take you to the cops!'

'Huh?' Teddy craned around to look at me, his face dazed.

'Never mind your smart mouth, kid,' Milo said, advancing to the fence

again with his hands curled into ham-sized fists. 'Let 'im fight his own

battles.'

'Sure,' I said. 'You only outweigh him by five hundred pounds.'

'I know you, too,' Milo said ominously. 'Your name's Lachance.' He

pointed to where Vern and Chris were finally picking themselves up, still

breathing fast from laughing so hard. 'And those guys are Chris Chambers

and one of those stupid Tessio kids. All your fathers are going to get calls

from me, except for the loony up to Togus. You'll go to the 'formatory,

every one of you. Juvenile delinquents!'

He stood flat on his feet, big freckled hands held out like a guy who

wanted to play One Potato Two Potato, breathing hard, eyes narrow, waiting

for us to cry or say we were sorry or maybe give him Teddy so he could

feed Teddy to Chopper.

Chris made an O out of his thumb and index finger and spat neatly

through it.

Vern hummed and looked to the sky.

Teddy said, 'Come on, Gordie. Let's get away from this asshole before I

puke.'

'Oh, you're gonna get it, you foulmouthed little whoremaster. Wait'll I get

you to the constable.'

'We heard what you said about his father,' I told him. 'We're all witnesses.

And you sicced that dog on me. That's against the law.'

Milo looked a trifle uneasy. 'You was trespassin'.'

'The hell I was. The dump's public property.'

'You climbed the fence.'

'Sure I did, after you sicced your dog on me,' I said, hoping that Milo

wouldn't recall that I'd also climbed the gate to get in.' What'd you think I

was gonna do? Stand there and et 'im rip me to pieces? Come on, you guys.

Let's go. It stinks around here.'

"Formatory,' Milo promised hoarsely, his voice shaking. 'Formatory for

you wiseguys.'

'Can't wait to tell the cops how you called a war vet a fuckin' loony,'

Chris called back over his shoulder as we moved away. 'What did you do in

the war, Mr Pressman?'

'NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESSr Milo shrieked. 'YOU HURT

MY DAWG!'

'Put it on your t. s. slip and send it to the chaplain,' Vern muttered, and

then we were climbing the railroad embankment again.

'Come back here!' Milo shouted, but his voice was fainter now and he

seemed to be losing interest.

Teddy shot him the finger as we walked away. I looked back over my

shoulder when we got to the top of the embankment. Milo was standing

there behind the security fence, a big man in a baseball cap with his dog

sitting beside him. His fingers were hooked through the small chain-link

diamonds as he shouted at us, and all at once I felt sorry for him-he looked

like the biggest third-grader in the world, locked inside the playground by

mistake, yelling for someone to let him out. He kept yelling for a while and

then he either gave up or we got out of range. No more was seen or heard of

Milo Pressman and Chopper that day.

There was some discussion-in righteous tones that were actually kind of

forced-sounding-about how we had shown that creepy Milo Pressman we

weren't just another bunch of pussies. I told how the guy at the Florida

Market had tried to jap us,

and then we fell into a gloomy silence, thinking it over. For my part, I

was thinking that maybe there was something to that stupid goocher

business after all. Things couldn't have turned out much worse-in fact, I

thought, it might be better to just keep going and spare my folks the pain of

having one son in the Castle View Cemetery and one in South Windham

Boys' Correctional. I had no doubt that Milo would go to the cops as soon

as the importance of the dump having been closed at the time of the

incident filtered into his thick skull. When that happened, he would realize

that I really had been trespassing, public property or not. Probably that gave

him every right in the world to sic his stupid dog on me. And while

Chopper wasn't the hellhound he was cracked up to be, he sure would have

ripped the sitdown out of my jeans if I hadn't won the race to the fence. All

of it put a big dark crimp in the day. And there was another gloomy idea

rolling around inside my head-the idea that this was no lark after all, and

maybe we deserved our bad luck. Maybe it was even God warning us to go

home. What were we doing, anyway, going to look at some kid that had

gotten himself all mashed up by a freight train?

But we were doing it, and none of us wanted to stop.

We had almost reached the trestle which carried the tracks across the

river when Teddy burst into tears. It was as if a great inner tidal wave had

broken through a carefully constructed set of mental dykes. No bullshit-it

was that sudden and that fierce. The sobs doubled him over like punches

and he sort of collapsed into a heap, his hands going from his stomach to

the mutilated gobs of flesh that were the remains of his ears. He went on

crying in hard, violent bursts. None of us knew what the fuck to do. It

wasn't crying like when you got hit by a line drive while you were playing

shortstop or smashed on the head playing tackle football on the common or

when you fell off your bike. There was nothing physically wrong with him.

We walked away a little and watched him, our hands in our pockets.

'Hey, man' Vern said in a very thin voice. Chris and I looked at Vern

hopefully. 'Hey, man' was always a good start. But Vern couldn't follow it

up.

Teddy leaned forward onto the crossties and put a hand over his eyes.

Now he looked like he was doing the Allah bit -'Salami, salami, baloney,' as

Popeye says. Except it wasn't funny.

At last, when the force of his crying had trailed off a little, it was Chris

who went to him.

He was the toughest guy in our gang (maybe even tougher than Jamie

Gallant, I thought privately), but he was also the guy who made the best

peace. He had a way about it. I'd seen him sit down on the curb next to a

little kid with a scraped knee, a kid he didn't even fucking know, and get

him talking about something-the Shrine Circus that was coming to town or

Huckleberry Hound on TV-until the kid forgot he was supposed to be hurt.

Chris was good at it. He was tough enough to be good at it.

'Listen, Teddy, what do you care what a fat old pile of shit like him said

about your father? Huh? I mean, sincerely! That don't change nothing, does

it? What a fat old pile of shit like him says? Huh? Huh? Does it?'

Teddy shook his head violently. It changed nothing. But to hear it spoken

of in bright daylight, something must have gone over and over in his mind

while he was lying awake in bed and looking at the moon off centre in one

windowpane, something he must have thought about in his slow and broken

way until it seemed almost holy, trying to make sense out of it, and then to

have it brought home to him that everybody else had merely dismissed his

dad as a loony that had rocked him. But it changed nothing. Nothing.

'He still stormed the beaches at Normandy, right?' Chris said. He picked

up one of Teddy's sweaty, grimy hands and patted it.

Teddy nodded fiercely, crying. Snot was running out of his nose.

'Do you think that pile of shit was at Normandy?'

Teddy shook his head violently. 'Nuh-Nuh-No?'

'Do you think that guy knows you?'

'Nuh-No! No, b-b-but-'

'Or your father? He one of your father's buddies?'

'NO!' Angry, horrified at the thought. Teddy's chest heaved and more

sobs came out of it.

He had pushed his hair away from his ears and I could see the round

brown plastic button of the hearing aid set in the middle of the right one.

The shape of the hearing aid made more sense than the shape of his ear, if

you get what I mean.

Chris said calmly, 'Talk is cheap.'

Teddy nodded, still not looking up.

'And whatever's between you and your old man, talk can't change that.'

Teddy's head shook without definition, unsure if this was true. Someone

had redefined his pain, and redefined it in shockingly common terms. That

would (loony) have to be examined (fucking section eight) later. In depth.

On long sleepless nights.

Chris rocked him. 'He was rankin' you, man,' he said in soothing

cadences that were almost a lullabye. 'He was just tryin' to rank you over

that friggin' fence, you know it? No strain, man. No fuckin' strain. He don't

know nothing about your old man. He don't know nothin' but stuff he heard

from those rumdums down at the Mellow Tiger. He's just dogshit, man.

Right, Teddy? Huh? Right?'

Teddy's crying was down to sniffles. He wiped his eyes, saving two sooty

rings around them, and sat up.

'I'm okay,' he said, and the sound of his own voice seemed to convince

him. 'Yeah, I'm okay." He stood up and put his glasses back on-dressing his

naked face, it seemed to me.

He laughed thinly and swiped his bare arm across the snot on his upper

lip. 'Fuckin' crybaby, right?'

'No, man,' Vern said uncomfortably. 'If anyone was rankin' out my dad -'

'Then you got to kill 'em!' Teddy said briskly, almost arrogantly. 'Kill

their asses. Right, Chris?'

'Right,' Chris said amiably, and clapped Teddy on the back.

'Right, Gordie?'

'Absolutely,' I said, wondering how Teddy could care so much for his dad

when his dad had practically killed him, and how I couldn't seem to give

much of a shit one way or the other about my own dad, when so far as I

could remember, he had never laid a hand on me since I was three and got

some bleach from under the sink and started to eat it.

We walked another two hundred yards down the tracks and Teddy said in

a quieter voice: 'Hey, if I spoiled your good time, I'm sorry. I guess that was

pretty stupid shit back there at that fence.'

'I ain't sure I want it to be no good time,' Vern said suddenly.

Chris looked at him. 'You sayin' you want to go back, man?'

'No, huh-uh!' Vern's face knotted in thought. 'But goin' to see a dead kid

it shouldn't be a party, maybe. I mean, if you can dig it. I mean' He looked

at us rather wildly. 'I mean, I could be a little scared. If you get me.'

Nobody said anything and Vern plunged on: 'I mean, sometimes I get

nightmares. Like aw, you guys remember the time Danny Naughton left

that pile of old funnybooks, the ones with the vampires and people getting

cut up and all that shit? Jeezum-crow, I'd wake up in the middle of the night

dreamin' about some guy hangin' in a house with his face all green or

somethin', you know, like that, and it seems like there's somethin' under the

bed and if I dangled a hand over the side, that thing might, you know, grab

me '

We all began to nod. We knew about the night-sweats. I would have

laughed then, though, if you had told me that one day not too many years

from then, I'd parley a simple case of the night-sweats into about a million

dollars.

'And I don't dare say anything because my friggin' brother well, you

know Billy he'd broadcast it' He shrugged miserably. 'So I'm ascared to

look at that kid 'cause if he's, you know, if he's really bad'

I swallowed and glanced at Chris. He was looking gravely at Vern and

nodding for him to go on.

'If he's really bad,' Vern resumed, 'I'll have nightmares about him and

wake up thinkin' it's him under my bed, all cut up in a pool of blood like he

just came out of one of those Saladmaster gadgets they show on TV, just

eyeballs and hair, but movin' somehow, if you can dig that, movin'

somehow, you know, and gettin' ready to grab -'

'Jesus Christ,' Teddy said thickly. 'What a fuckin' bedtime story.'

'Well I can't help it,' Vern said, his voice defensive. 'But I feel like we

hafta see him, even if there are bad dreams. You know? Like we hafta. But

but maybe it shouldn't be no good time.'

'Yeah,' Chris said softly. 'Maybe it shouldn't.'

Vern said pleadingly: 'You won't tell none of the other guys, will you? I

don't mean about the nightmares, everybody has those- I mean about wakin'

up and thinkin' there might be somethin' under the bed. I'm too fuckin' old

for the boogeyman.'

We all said we wouldn't tell, and a glum silence fell over us again. It was

only quarter to three, but it felt much later. It was too hot and too much had

happened. We weren't even over into Harlow yet. We were going to have to

pick them up and lay them down if we were going to make some real miles

before dark.

We passed the railroad junction and a signal on a tall, rusty pole and all

of us paused to chuck cinders at the steel flag on top, but nobody hit it. And

around three-thirty we came to the Castle River and the GS&WM trestle

which crossed it.

The river was better than a hundred yards across at that point in 1960;

I've been back to look at it since then, and found it had narrowed up quite a

bit during the years between. They're always fooling with the river, trying to

make it work better for the mills, and they've put in so many dams that it's

pretty well tamed. But in those days there were only three dams on the

whole length of the river as it ran across all of New Hampshire and half of

Maine. The Castle was still pretty free back then, and every third spring it

would overflow its banks and cover Route 136 in either Harlow or Danvers

Junction or both.

Now, at the end of the driest summer western Maine had seen since the

depression, it was still broad. From where we stood on the Castle Rock

side, the bulking forest on the Harlow side looked like a different country

altogether. The pines and spruces over there were bluish in the heat-haze of

the afternoon. The rails went across the water fifty feet up, supported by an

underpinning of tarred wooden support posts and crisscrossing beams.

The water was so shallow you could look down and see the tops of the

cement plugs which had been planted ten feet deep in the riverbed to hold

up the trestle.

The trestle itself was pretty chintzy-the rails ran over a long, narrow

wooden platform of six-by-fours. There was a four-inch gap between each

pair of these beams where you could look all the way down into the water.

On the sides, there was no more than eighteen inches between the rail and

the edge of the trestle. If a train came it was maybe enough room to avoid

getting plastered but the wind generated by a highballing freight would

surely sweep you off to fall to a certain death against the rocks just below

the surface of the shallow running water.

Looking at the trestle, we all felt fear start to crawl around in our bellies

and mixing uneasily with the fear was the excitement of a boss dare, a

really big one, something you could brag on for weeks after you got home

if you got home. That queer light was creeping back into Teddy's eyes and I

thought he wasn't seeing the GS&WM train trestle at all but a long sandy

beach, a thousand LSTs aground in the foaming waves, ten thousand GIs

charging up the sand, combat boots digging. They were leaping rolls of

barbed wire! Tossing grenades at pillboxes! Overrunning machine-gun

nests!

We were standing beside the tracks where the cinders sloped away

towards the river's cut-the place where the embankment stopped and the

trestle began. Looking down, I could see where the slope started to get

steep. The cinders gave way to straggly, tough-looking bushes and slabs of

grey rock. Further down there were a few stunted firs with exposed roots

writhing their way out of fissures in the plates of rock; they seemed to be

looking down at their own miserable reflections in the running water.

At this point, the Castle River actually looked fairly clean; at Castle Rock

it was just entering Maine's textile-mill belt. But there were no fish jumping

out there, although the river was clear enough to see the bottom-you had to

go another ten miles upstream and towards New Hampshire before you

could see any fish in the Castle. There were no fish, and along the edges of

the river you could see dirty collars of foam around some of the rocks-the

foam was the colour of old ivory. The river's smell was not particularly

pleasant, either; it smelled like a laundry hamper full of mildewy towels.

Dragonflies stitched at the surface of the water and laid their eggs with

impunity. There were no trout to eat them. Hell, there weren't even any

shiners.

'Man,' Chris said softly.

'Come on,' Teddy said in that brisk, arrogant way. 'Let's go.' He was

already edging his way out, walking on the six-by-fours between the

shining rails.

'Say,' Vern said uneasily, 'any of you guys know when the next train's

due?'

We all shrugged.

I said, 'There's the Route 136 bridge'

'Hey, come on, gimme a break!' Teddy cried. 'That means walkin' five

miles down the river on this side and then five miles back up on the other

side it'll take us until dark! If we use the trestle, we can get to the same

place in ten minutes!'

'But if a train comes, there's nowheres to go,' Vern said. He wasn't

looking at Teddy. He was looking down at the fast, bland river.

'Fuck there isn't!' Teddy said indignantly. He swung over the edge and

held one of the wooden supports between the rails. He hadn't gone out very

far-his sneakers were almost touching the ground-but the thought of doing

that same thing above the middle of the river with a fifty-foot drop beneath

and a train bellowing by just over my head, a train that would probably be

dropping some nice hot sparks into my hair and down the back of my neck

none of that actually made me feel like Queen for a Day.

'See how easy it is?' Teddy said. He dropped to the embankment, dusted

his hands, and climbed back up beside us.

'You tellin' me you're gonna hang on that way if it's a two hundred car

freight?' Chris asked. 'Just sorta hang there by your hands for five or ten

minutes?'

'You chicken?' Teddy shouted.

'No, just askin' what you'd do,' Chris said, grinning. 'Peace, man.'

'Go around if you want to!' Teddy brayed. 'Who gives a fuck? I'll wait for

you! I'll take a nap!'

'One train already went by,' I said reluctantly. 'And there probably isn't

any more than one, two trains a day that go through Harlow. Look at this.' I

kicked the weeds growing up through the railroad ties with one sneaker.

There were no weeds growing between the tracks which ran between Castle

Rock and Lewiston.

'There. See?' Teddy was triumphant.

'But still, there's a chance,' I added.

'Yeah,' Chris said. He was looking only at me, his eyes sparkling. 'Dare

you, Lachance.'

'Dares go first.'

'Okay,' Chris said. He widened his gaze to take in Teddy and Vern. 'Any

pussies here?'

'NO!' Teddy shouted.

Vern cleared his throat, croaked, cleared it again, and said 'no' in a very

small voice. He smiled a weak, sick smile.

'Okay,' Chris said but we hesitated for a moment, even Teddy, looking

warily up and down the tracks. I knelt down and took one of the steel rails

firmly in my hand, never minding that it was almost hot enough to blister

the skin. The rail was mute.

'Okay,' I said, and as I said it some guy pole-vaulted in my stomach. He

dug his pole all the way into my balls, it felt like, and ended up sitting

astride my heart.

We went out onto the trestle single-file: Chris first, then Teddy, then

Vern, and me playing tail-end Charlie because I was the one who said dares

go first. We walked on the platform crossties between the rails, and you had

to look at your feet whether you were scared of heights or not. A misstep

and you would go down to your crotch, probably with a broken ankle to

pay.

The embankment dropped away beneath me, and every step further out

seemed to seal our decision more firmly and to make it feel more

suicidally stupid. I stopped to look up when I saw the rocks giving way to

water far beneath me. Chris and Teddy were a long way ahead, almost out

over the middle, and Vern was tottering slowly along behind them, peering

studiously down at his feet. He looked like an old lady trying out stilts with

his head poked downward, his back hunched, his arms held out for balance.

I looked back over my shoulder. Too far, man, I had to keep going now, and

not only because a train might come. If I went back, I'd be a pussy for life.

So I got walking again. After looking down at that endless series of

crossties for a while, with a glimpse of running water between each pair, I

started to feel dizzy

and disoriented. Each time I brought my foot down, part of my brain

assured me it was going to plunge through into space, even though I could

see it was not.

I became acutely aware of all the noises inside me and outside me, like

some crazy orchestra tuning up to play. The steady thump of my heart, the

bloodbeat in my ears like a drum being played with brushes, the creak of

sinews like the strings of a violin that has been tuned radically upward, the

steady hiss of the river, the hot hum of a locust digging into tight bark, the

monotonous cry of a chickadee, and somewhere, far away, a barking dog.

Chopper, maybe. The mildewy smell of the Castle River was strong in my

nose. The long muscles in my thighs were trembling. I kept thinking how

much safer it would be (probably faster, as well) if I just got down on my

hands and knees and scuttered along that way. But I wouldn't do that-none

of us would. If the Saturday matinee movies down to the Gem had taught us

anything, it was that Only Losers Crawl. It was one of the central tenets of

the Gospel According to Hollywood. Good guys walk firmly upright, and if

your sinews are creaking like overtuned violin strings because of the

adrenalin rush going on in your body, and if the long muscles in your thighs

are trembling for the same reason, why, so be it.

I had to stop in the middle of the trestle and look up at the sky for a

while. That dizzy feeling had been getting worse. I saw phantom crossties-

they seemed to float right in front of my nose. Then they faded out and I

began to feel okay again. I looked ahead and saw I had almost caught up

with Vern, who was slowpoking along worse than ever. Chris and Teddy

were almost all the way across.

And although I've since written seven books about people who can do

such exotic things as read minds and precognit the future, that was when I

had my first and last psychic flash. I'm sure that's what it was; how else to

explain it? I squatted and made a fist around the rail on my left. It

thrummed in my hand. It was thrumming so hard that it was like gripping a

bundle of deadly metallic snakes.

You've heard it said 'His bowels turned to water'? I know what that phrase

means -exactly what it means. It may be the most accurate cliche ever

coined. I've been scared since, badly scared, but I've never been as scared as

I was in that moment, holding that hot live rail. It seemed that for a moment

all my works below throat level just went limp and lay there in an internal

faint. A thin stream of urine ran listlessly down the inside of one thigh. My

mouth opened. I didn't open it, it opened by itself, the jaw dropping like a

trapdoor from which the hingepins had suddenly been moved. My tongue

was plastered suffocatingly against the roof of my mouth. All my muscles

were locked. That was the worst. My works were limp but my muscles were

in a kind of dreadful lockbolt and I couldn't move at all. It was only for a

moment, but in the subjective timestream, it seemed forever.

All sensory input became intensified, as if some power surge had

occurred in the electrical flow of my brain, cranking everything up from a

hundred and ten volts to two-twenty. I could hear a plane passing in the sky

somewhere near and had time to wish I was on it, just sitting in a window

seat with a Coke in my hand and gazing idly down at the shining line of a

river whose name I did not know. I could see every little splinter and gouge

in the tarred crosstie I was squatting on. And out of the corner of my eye I

could see the rail itself with my hand still clutched around it, glittering

insanely. The vibration from that rail sank so deeply into my hand that

when I took it away it still vibrated, the nerve-endings kicking each other

over again and again, tingling the way a hand or a foot tingles when it has

been asleep and is starting to wake up. I could taste my saliva, suddenly all

electric and sour and thickened to curds along my gums. And worst,

somehow most horrible of all, I couldn't hear the train yet, could not know

if it was rushing at me from ahead or behind, or how close it was. It was

invisible. It was unannounced, except for that shaking rail in my hand.

There was only that to advertise its imminent arrival. An image of Ray

Brower, dreadfully mangled and thrown into a ditch somewhere like a

ripped-open laundry bag, reeled before my eyes. We would join him, or at

least Vern and I would, or at least I would. We had invited ourselves to our

own funerals. The last thought broke the paralysis and I shot to my feet. I

probably would have looked like a jack-in-the-box to anyone watching, but

to myself I felt like a boy in underwater slow motion, shooting up not

through five feet of air but rather up through five hundred feet of water,

moving slowly, moving with a dreadful languidness as the water parted

grudgingly.

But at last I did break the surface. I screamed: 'TRAIN!'

The last of the paralysis fell from me and I began to run.

Vern's head jerked back over his shoulder. The surprise that distorted his

face was almost comically exaggerated, written as large as the letters in a

Dick and Jane primer. He saw me break into my clumsy, shambling run,

dancing from one horribly high crosstie to the next, and knew I wasn't

joking. He began to run himself.

Far ahead, I could see Chris stepping off the ties and onto the solid safe

embankment and I hated him with a sudden bright green hate as juicy and

as bitter as the sap in an April leaf. He was safe. That fucker was safe. I

watched him drop to his knees and grab a rail My left foot almost slipped

into the yaw beneath me. I flailed with my arms, my eyes as hot as ball

bearings in some runaway piece of machinery, got my balance, and ran on.

Now I was right behind Vern. We were past the halfway point and for the

first time I heard the train. It was coming from behind us, coming from the

Castle Rock side of the river. It was a low rumbling noise that began to rise

slightly and sort itself into the diesel thrum of the engine and the higher,

more sinister sound of big grooved wheels turning heavily on the rails.

'Awwwwwwww, shit!' Vern screamed. 'Run, you pussy!' I yelled, and

thumped him on the back. 'I can't! I'll fall!'

'Runfaster!'

'A wwwwwwwwwww-SHIT!'

But he ran faster, a shambling scarecrow with a bare, sunburnt back, the

collar of his shirt swinging and dangling below his butt. I could see the

sweat standing out on his peeling shoulderblades, standing out in perfect

little beads. I could see the fine down on the nape of his neck. His muscles

clenched and loosened, clenched and loosened, clenched and loosened. His

spine stood out in a series of knobs, each knob casting its own crescent-

shaped shadow- I could see that these knobs grew closer together as they

approached his neck. He was still holding his bedroll and I was still holding

mine. Vern's feet thudded on the crossties. He almost missed one, lunged

forward with his arms out, and I whacked him on the back again to keep

him going. 'Gordeeee I can't AWWWWWWWWWWW-SHE-EEEEYIT-'

'RUN FASTER, DICKFACE!' I bellowed and was I enjoying this? Yeah-

in some peculiar, self-destructive way that I have experienced since only

when completely and utterly drunk, I was. I was driving Vern Tessio like a

drover getting a particularly fine cow to market. And maybe he was

enjoying his own fear in that same way, bawling like that self-same cow,

hollering and sweating, his ribcage rising and falling like the bellows of a

blacksmith on a speed-trip, clumsily keeping his footing, lurching ahead.

The train was very loud now, its engine deepening to a steady rumble. Its

whistle sounded as it crossed the junction point where we had paused to

chuck cinders at the rail-flag. I had finally gotten my hellhound, like it or

not. I kept waiting for the trestle to start shaking under my feet. When that

happened, it would be right behind us. 'GO FASTER, VERN! FAAASTER!'

'Oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd AWWWWWWW-

SHEEEEEEEYIT!' The freight's electric horn suddenly spanked the air into

a hundred pieces with one long loud blast, making everything you ever saw

in a movie or a comic book or one of your own daydreams fly apart, letting

you know what both the heroes and the cowards really heard when death

flew at them: WHHHHHHHONNNNNNK!

WHHHHHHHHHONNNNNNNNK!

And then Chris was below us and to the right, and Teddy was behind

him, his glasses flashing back arcs of sunlight, and they were both

mouthing a single word and the word was jump! but the train had sucked all

the blood out of the word, leaving only its shape in their mouths. The trestle

began to shake as the train charged across it. We jumped. Vern landed full-

length in the dust and the cinders and I landed right beside him, almost on

top of him. I never did see that train, nor do I know if its engineer saw us-

when I mentioned the possibility that he hadn't seen us to Chris a couple of

years later, he said, 'They don't blow the electric horn like that just for

chucks, Gordie.' But he could have; he could have been blowing it just for

the hell of it. I suppose. Right then, such fine points didn't much matter. I

clapped my hands over my ears and dug my face into the hot dirt as the

freight went by, metal squalling against metal, the air buffeting us. I had no

urge to look at it. It was a long freight but I never looked at all. Before it

had passed completely, I felt a warm hand on my neck and knew it was

Chris's.

When it was gone-when I was sure it was gone -I raised my head like a

soldier coming out of his foxhole at the end of a day-long artillery barrage.

Vern was still plastered into the dirt, shivering. Chris was sitting cross-

legged between us, one hand on Vern's sweaty neck, the other still on mine.

When Vern finally sat up, shaking all over and licking his lips

compulsively, Chris said, 'What you guys think if we drink those Cokes?

Could anybody use one besides me?' We all thought we could use one.

About a quarter of a mile along on the Harlow side, the GS&WM tracks

plunged directly into the woods. The heavily wooded land sloped down to a

marshy area. It was full of mosquitoes almost as big as fighter-planes, but it

was cool blessedly cool.

We sat down in the shade to drink our Cokes. Vern and I threw our shirts

over our shoulders to keep the bugs off, but Chris and Teddy just sat naked

to the waist, looking as cool and collected as two Eskimos in an icehouse.

We hadn't been there five minutes when Vern had to go off into the bushes

and take a squat, which led to a good deal of joking and elbowing when he

got back.

'Train scare you much, Vern?'

'No,' Vern said. 'I was gonna squat when we got across, anyway. I hadda

take a squat, you know?'

'Verrrrrrrn!' Chris and Teddy chorused.

'Come on, you guys, I did. Sincerely.'

'Then you won't mind if we examine the seat of your Jockeys for

Hershey-squirts, willya?' Teddy asked, and Vern laughed, finally

understanding that he was getting ribbed.

'Go screw.'

Chris turned to me. 'That train scare you, Gordie?'

'Nope,' I said, and sipped my Coke.

'Not much, you sucker.' He punched my arm.

'Sincerely! I wasn't scared at all.'

'Yeah? You wasn't scared?' Teddy was looking me over carefully.

'No. I was fuckin' petrified.'

This slew all of them, even Vern, and we laughed long and hard. Then we

just laid back, not goofing anymore, just drinking our Cokes and being

quiet. My body felt warm, exercised, at peace with itself. Nothing in it was

working crossgrain to anything else. I was alive and glad to be. Everything

seemed to stand out with a special dearness, and although I never could

have said that out loud I didn't think it mattered-maybe that sense of

dearness was something I wanted just for myself.

I think I began to understand a little bit that day what makes men become

daredevils. I paid twenty dollars to watch Evel Knievel attempt his jump

over the Snake River Canyon a couple of years ago and my wife was

horrified. She told me that if I'd been born a Roman I would have been right

there in the Coliseum, munching grapes and watching as the lions

disembowelled the Christians. She was wrong, although it was hard for me

to explain why (and, really, I think she thought I was just jiving her). I

didn't cough up that twenty to watch the man die on coast-to-coast closed-

circuit TV, although I was quite sure that was exactly what was going to

happen. I went because of the shadows that are always somewhere behind

our eyes, because of what Bruce Springsteen calls the darkness on the edge

of town in one of his songs, and at one time or another I think everyone

wants to dare that darkness in spite of the jalopy bodies that some joker of a

God gave us human beings. No not in spite of our jalopy bodies but

because of them.

'Hey, tell that story,' Chris said suddenly, sitting up.

'What story?' I asked, although I guess I knew.

I always felt uncomfortable when the talk turned to my stories, although

all of them seemed to like them-wanting to tell stories, even wanting to

write them down that was just peculiar enough to be boss, like wanting to

grow up to be a sewer inspector or a Grand Prix mechanic. Richie Jenner, a

kid who hung around with us until his family moved to Nebraska in 1959,

was the first one to find out that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, that

I wanted to do that for my full-time job. We were up in my room, just

fooling around, and he found a bunch of handwritten pages under the comic

books in a carton in my closet. What's this! Richie asks. Nothin', I say, and

try to grab them back. Richie held the pages up out of reach I must admit

that I didn't try very hard to get them back. I wanted him to read them and

at the same time I didn't-an uneasy mix of pride and shyness that has never

changed in me very much when someone asks to look. The act of writing

itself is done in secret, like masturbation-oh, I have one friend who has

done things like write stories in the display windows of bookshops and

department stores, but this is a man who is nearly crazy with courage, the

kind of man you'd like to have with you if you just happened to fall down

with a heart attack in a city where no one knew you. For me, it always

wants to be sex and always falls short-it's always that adolescent handjob in

the bathroom with the door locked.

Richie sat right there on the end of my bed for most of the afternoon

reading his way through the stuff I had been doing, most of it influenced by

the same sort of comic books as the ones that had given Vern nightmares.

And when he was done, Richie looked at me in a strange new way that

made me feel very peculiar, as if he

had been forced to reappraise my whole personality. He said, You're

pretty good at this. Why don't you show these to Chris? I said no, I wanted

it to be a secret, and Richie said: Why It ain't pussy. You ain't no queer. I

mean, it ain't poetry.

Still, I made him promise not to tell anybody about my stories and of

course he did and it turned out most of them liked to read the stuff I wrote,

which was mostly about getting buried alive or some crook coming back

from the dead and slaughtering the jury that had condemned him in Twelve

Interesting Ways or a maniac that went crazy and chopped a lot of people

into veal cutlets before the hero, Curt Cannon, 'cut the subhuman,

screeching madman to pieces with round after round from his smoking.45

automatic.' In my stories, they were always rounds. Never bullets.

For a change of pace, there were the Le Dio stories. Le Dio was a town in

France, and during 1942, a grim squad of tired American dog-faces were

trying to retake it from the Nazis (this was two years before I discovered

that the Allies didn't land in France until 1944). They went on trying to re-

take it, fighting their way from street to street, through about forty stories

which I wrote between the ages of nine and fourteen. Teddy was absolutely

made for the Le Dio stories, and I think I wrote the last dozen or so just for

him -by then I was heartily sick of Le Dio and writing things like Mon Dieu

and Cherchez le Bochel and Fermez la portel In Le Dio, French peasants

were always hissing to GI dogfaces to Fermez la portel But Teddy would

hunch over the pages, his eyes big, his brow beaded with sweat, his face

twisting. There were times when I could almost hear air-cooled Brownings

and whistling 88s going off in his skull. The way he clamoured for more Le

Dio stories was both pleasing and frightening.

Nowadays writing is my work and the pleasure has diminished a little,

and more and more often that guilty, masturbatory pleasure has become

associated in my head with the coldly clinical images of artificial

insemination: I come according to the rules and regs laid down in my

publishing contract. And although no one is ever going to call me the

Thomas Wolfe of my generation, I rarely feel like a cheat: I get it off as

hard as I can every fucking time. Doing less would, in an odd way, be like

going faggot-or what that meant to us back then. What scares me is how

often it hurts these days. Back then I was sometimes disgusted by how

damned good it felt to write. These days I sometimes look at this typewriter

and wonder when it's going to run out of good words. I don't want that to

happen. I guess I can bear the pain as long as I don't run out of good words,

you know?

'What's this story?' Vern asked uneasily. 'It ain't a horror story, is it,

Gordie? I don't think I want to hear no horror stories. I'm not up for that,

man.'

'No, it ain't a horror,' Chris said. 'It's really funny. Gross, but funny. Go

on, Gordie. Hammer that fucker to us.'

'Is it about Le Dio?' Teddy asked.

'No, it ain't about Le Dio, you fuckin' psycho,' Chris said, and rabbit-

punched him. 'It's about this pie-eatin' contest.'

'Hey, I didn't even write it down yet,' I said.

'Yeah, but tell it'

'You guys want to hear it?'

'Sure,' Teddy said. 'Boss.'

'Well, it's about this made-up town, Gretna, I call it. Gretna, Maine.'

'Gretna?' Vern said, grinning. 'What kind of name is that? There ain't no

Gretna in Maine.'

'Shut up, fool,' Chris said. 'He just toldja it was made-up, didn't he?'

'Yeah, but Gretna, that sounds pretty stupid -'

'Lots of real towns sound stupid,' Chris said. 'I mean, what about Alfred,

Maine? Or Saco, Maine? Or Jerusalem's Lot? Or Castle-fuckin'-Rock?

There ain't no castle here. Most town names are stupid. You just don't think

so because you're used to 'em. Right, Gordie?'

'Sure,' I said, but privately I thought Vern was right- Gretna was a pretty

stupid name for a town. I just hadn't been able to think of another one. 'So

anyway, they're having their annual Pioneer Days, just like in Castle Rock -'

'Yeah, Pioneer Days, that's a fuckin' blast,' Vern said earnestly. 'I put my

whole family in that jail on wheels they have, even fuckin' Billy. It was only

for half an hour and it cost me my whole allowance but it was worth it just

to know where that sonofawhore was -'

'Will you shut up and let him tell it?' Teddy hollered.

Vern blinked. 'Sure. Yeah. Okay.'

'Go on, Gordie,' Chris said.

'It's not really much -'

'Naw, we don't expect much from a wet end like you,' Teddy said, 'but tell

it anyway.'

I cleared my throat. 'So anyway. It's Pioneer Days, and on the last night

they have these three big events. There's an egg-roll for the little kids and a

sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine, and then there's the pie-eating

contest. And the main guy of the story is this fat kid nobody likes named

Davie Hogan.'

'Like Charlie Hogan's brother if he had one,' Vern said, and then shrank

back as Chris rabbit-punched him again.

'This kid, he's our age, but he's fat. He weighs like one-eighty and he's

always gettin' beat up and ranked out. And all the kids, instead of calling

him Davie, they call him Lard Ass Hogan and rank him out whenever they

get the chance.'

They nodded respectfully, showing the proper sympathy for Lard Ass,

although if such a guy ever showed up in Castle Rock, we all would have

been out teasing him and ranking him to the dogs and back.

'So he decided to take revenge because he's, like, fed up, you know? He's

only in the pie- eating contest, but that's like the final event during Pioneer

Days and everyone really digs it. The prize is five bucks -'

'So he wins it and gives the finger to everybody!' Teddy said. 'Boss!'

'No, it's better than that,' Chris said. 'Just shut up and listen.'

'Lard Ass figures to himself, five bucks, what's that? If anybody

remembers anything at all in two weeks, it'll just be that fuckin' pig Hogan

out-ate everybody, well, it figures, let's go over his house and rank the shit

out of him, only now we'll call him Pie Ass instead of Lard Ass.'

They nodded some more, agreeing that Davie Hogan was a thinking cat. I

began to warm to my own story.

'But everybody expects him to enter the contest, you know. Even his

mom and dad. Hey, they practically got that five bucks spent for him

already.'

'Yeah, right,' Chris said.

'So he's thinkin' about it and hating the whole thing, because being fat

isn't really his fault. See, he'd got these weird fuckin' glands, somethin', and

'My cousin's like that!' Vern said excitedly. 'Sincerely! She weighs close

to three hundred pounds! Supposed to be her Hyboid Gland or something

like that. I dunno about her Hyboid Gland, but what a fuckin' blimp, no shit,

she looks like a fuckin' Thanksgiving turkey, and this one time -'

'Will you shut the fuck up, Vern?' Chris cried violently. 'For the last time!

Honest to God!' He had finished his Coke and now he turned the hourglass-

shaped green bottle upside down and brandished it over Vent's head.

'Yeah, right, I'm sorry. Go on, Gordie. It's a swell story.'

I smiled. I didn't really mind Vern's interruptions, but of course I couldn't

tell Chris that; he was the self-appointed Guardian of Art. 'So he's turnin' it

over in his mind, you know, the whole week before the contest At school

kids keep comin' up to him and sayin' Hey Lard Ass, how many pies ya

gonna eat? Ya gonna eat ten? Twenty? Fuckin' eighty! And Lard Ass, he

says, How should I know. I don't even know what kind they are. And see,

there's quite a bit of interest in the contest because the champ is this

grownup whose name is, uh, Bill Traynor, I guess. And this guy Traynor, he

ain't even fat In fact, he's a real stringbean. But he can eat pies like a whiz,

and the year before he ate six pies in five minutes.'

'Whole pies?' Teddy asked, awe-struck.

'Right you are. And Lard Ass, he's the youngest guy to ever be in the

contest'

'Go, Lard Ass!' Teddy cried excitedly. 'Scoff up those fuckin' pies!'

'Tell 'em about the other guys in it,' Chris said.

'Okay. Besides Lard Ass Hogan and Bill Traynor, there was Calvin Spier,

the fattest guy in town-he ran the jewellery store -'

'Gretna Jewels,' Vern said, and snickered. Chris gave him a black look.

'And then there's this guy who's a disc jockey at a radio station up in

Lewiston, he ain't exactly fat but he's sorta chubby, you know. And the last

guy was Hubert Gretna the Third, who was the principal of Lard Ass

Hogan's school.'

'He was eatin' against his own principal!' Teddy asked.

Chris clutched his knees and rocked back and forth joyfully. 'Ain't that

great! Go on, Gordie!'

I had them now. They were all leaning forward. I felt an intoxicating

sense of power. I tossed my empty Coke bottle into the woods and

scrunched around a little bit to get comfortable. I remember hearing the

chickadee again, off in the woods, farther away now, lifting its monotonous,

endless call into the sky: dee-dee-dee dee 'So he gets this idea,' I said. The

greatest revenge idea a kid ever had. The big night comes-the end of

Pioneer Days. The pie-eating contest comes just before the fireworks. The

Main Street of Gretna has been closed off so people can walk around in it,

and there's this big platform set up right in the street. There's bunting

hanging down and a big crowd in front. There's also a photographer from

the paper, to get a picture of the winner with blueberries all over his face,

because it turned out to be blueberry pies that year. Also, I almost forgot to

tell you this, they had to eat the pies with their hands tied behind their

backs. So, dig it, they come up onto the platform'

From The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan, by Gordon Lachance, originally

published in Cavalier magazine, March, 1975. Used by permission.

They came up onto the platform one by one and stood behind a long

trestie table covered with a linen cloth. The table was stacked high with pies

and stood at the edge of the platform. Above it were looped necklaces of

bare 100-watt bulbs, moths and night-fliers banging softly against them and

haloing them. Above the platform, bathed in spotlights, was a long sign

which read: THE GREAT GRETNA PIE-EAT OF 1960! To either side of

this sign hung battered loudspeakers, supplied by Chuck Day of the Great

Day Appliance Shop. Bill Travis, the reigning champion, was Chuck's

cousin. As each contestant came up, his hands bound behind him and his

shirtfront open, like Sidney Carton on his way to the guillotine, Mayor

Charbonneau would announce his name over Chuck's PA system and tie a

large white bib around his neck. Calvin Spier received token applause only;

in spite of his belly, which was the size of a twenty-gallon waterbarrel, he

was considered an underdog second only to the Hogan kid (most considered

Lard Ass a comer, but too young and inexperienced to do much this year).

After Spier, Bob Cormier was introduced. Cormier was a disc jockey who

did a popular afternoon programme at WLAM in Lewiston. He got a bigger

hand, accompanied by a few screams from the teenaged girls in the

audience. The girls thought he was 'cute'. John Wiggins, principal of Gretna

Elementary School, followed Cormier. He received a hearty cheer from the

older section of the audience-and a few scattered boos from fractious

members of his student body. Wiggins managed to beam paternally and

frown sternly down on the audience at the same time. Next, Mayor

Charbonneau introduced Lard Ass.

'A new participant in the annual Great Gretna Pie-Eat, but one we expect

great things from in the future young master David Hogan! Lard Ass got a

big round of applause as Mayor Charbonneau tied on his bib, and as it was

dying away, a rehearsed Greek chorus just beyond the reach of the 100-watt

bulbs cried out in wicked unison: '

'Go-get-'em-Lard Ass!'

There were muffled shrieks of laughter, running footsteps, a few shadows

that no one could (or would) identify, some nervous laughter, some judicial

frowns (the largest from Hizzoner Charbonneau, the most visible figure of

authority). Lard Ass himself appeared to not even notice. The small smile

greasing his thick lips and creasing his thick chops did not change as the

Mayor, still frowning largely, tied his bib around his neck and told him not

to pay any attention to fools in the audience (as if the Mayor had even the

faintest inkling of what monstrous fools Lard Ass Hogan had suffered and

would continue to suffer as he rumbled through life like a Nazi Tiger Tank).

The Mayor's breath was warm and smelled of beer.

The last contestant to mount the bunting-decorated stage drew the loudest

and most sustained applause; this was the legendary Bill Travis, six feet

five inches tall, gangling, voracious. Travis was a mechanic at the local

Amoco station down by the railyard, a likeable fellow if there ever was

one.; It was common knowledge around town that there was more involved

in the Great Gretna Pie-Eat than a mere five dollars-at least, for Bill Travis

there was. There were two reasons for this. First, people always came by

the station to congratulate Bill after he won the contest, and most everyone

who came to congratulate stayed to get his gas-tank filled. And the two

garage-bays were sometimes booked up for a solid month after the contest.

Folks would come in to get a muffler replaced or their wheel-bearings

greased, and would sit in the theatre chairs ranged along one wall (Jerry

Mating, who owned the Amoco, had salvaged them from the old Gem

Theatre when it was torn down in 1957), drinking Cokes and Moxies from

out of the machine and gassing with Bill about the contest as he changed

sparkplugs or rolled around on a crawlie-wheelie under someone's

International Harvester pickup, looking for holes in the exhaust system. Bill

always seemed willing to talk, which was one of the reasons he was so

well-liked in Gretna. There was some dispute around town as to whether

Jerry Maling gave Bill a flat bonus for the extra business his yearly feat (or

yearly eat, if you prefer) brought in, or if he got an out-and-out raise.

Whatever way it was, there could be no doubt that Travis did much better

than most small-town wrench jockeys. He had a nice-looking two-storey

ranch out on the Sabbatus Road, and certain snide people referred to it as

'the house that pies built'. That was probably an exaggeration, but Bill had it

coming another way which brings us to the second reason there was more

in it for Travis than just five dollars. The pie-eat was a hot wagering event

in Gretna. Perhaps most people only came to laugh, but a goodly minority

also came to lay their money down. Contestants were observed and

discussed by these betters as ardently as thoroughbreds are observed and

discussed by racing touts. The wagerers accosted contestants' friends,

relatives, even mere acquaintances. They pried out any and all details

concerning the contestants' eating habits. There was always a lot of

discussion about that year's official pie-apple was considered a 'heavy' pie,

apricot a 'light' one (although a contestant had to resign himself to a day or

two of the trots after downing three or four apricot pies). That year's official

pie, blueberry, was considered a happy medium. Betters, of course, were

particularly interested in their man's stomach for blueberry dishes. How did

he do on blueberry buckle? Did he favour blueberry jam over strawberry

preserve? Had he been known to sprinkle blueberries on his breakfast

cereal, or was he strictly a bananas-and-cream sort of fellow?

There were other questions of some moment. Was he a fast eater who

slowed down or a slow eater who started to speed up as things got serious

or just a good steady all-around trencher-man? How many hot dogs could

he put away while watching a Babe Ruth League game down at the St

Dom's baseball field? Was he much of a beer-drinker, and, if so, how many

bottles did he usually put away in the course of an evening? Was he a

belcher? It was believed that a good belcher was a bit tougher to beat over

the long haul.

All of this and other information was sifted, the odds laid, the bets made.

How much money actually changed hands during the week or so following

pie-night I have no way of knowing, but if you held a gun to my head and

forced me to guess, I'd put it at close to a thousand dollars-that probably

sounds like a pretty paltry figure, but it was a lot of money to be passing

around in such a small town fifteen years ago.

And because the contest was honest and a strict time-limit of ten minutes

was observed, no one objected to a competitor betting on himself, and Bill

Travis did so every year.

Talk was, as he nodded, smiling, to his audience on that summer night in

1960, that he had bet a substantial amount on himself again, and that the

best he had been able to do this year was one-for-five odds. If you're not the

betting type, let me explain it this way: he'd have to put two hundred and

fifty dollars at risk to win fifty. Not a good deal at all, but it was the price of

success-and as he stood there, soaking up the applause and smiling easy, he

didn't look too worried about it.

'And the defending champion,' Mayor Charbonneau trumpeted, 'Gretna's

own Bill Travis!'

'Hoo, Bill!'

'How many you goin' through tonight, Bill?'

'You goin' for ten, Billy-boy?'

'I got a two-spot on you, Bill! Don't let me down, boy!'

'Save me one of those pies, Trav!'

Nodding and smiling with all proper modesty, Bill Travis allowed the

Mayor to tie his bib around his neck. Then he sat down at the far right end

of the table, near the place where Mayor Charbonneau would stand during

the contest. From right to

left, then, the eaters were Bill Travis, David 'Lard Ass' Hogan, Bob

Cormier, principal John Wiggins, and Calvin Spier holding down the stool

on the far left.

Mayor Charbonneau introduced Sylvia Dodge, who was even more of a

contest figure than Bill Travis himself. She had been President of the

Gretna Ladies' Auxiliary for years beyond telling (since the First Manassas,

according to some town wits), and it was she who oversaw the baking of

each year's pies, strictly subjecting each to her own rigorous quality control,

which included a weigh-in ceremony on Mr Bancichek's butcher's scales

down at the Freedom Market -this to make sure that each pie weighed

within an ounce of the others.

Sylvia smiled regally down at the crowd, her blue hair twinkling under

the hot glow of the light-bulbs. She made a short speech about how glad she

was that so much of the town had turned out to celebrate their hardy pioneer

forebears, the people who made this country great, for it was great, not only

on the grassroots level where Mayor Charbonneau would be leading the

local Republicans to the hallowed seats of town government again in

November, but on the national level where the team of Nixon and Lodge

would take the torch of freedom from Our Great and Beloved General and

hold it high for-Calvin Spier's belly rumbled noisily-Goinnnngg! There was

laughter and even some applause. Sylvia Dodge, who knew perfectly well

that Calvin was both a Democrat and a Catholic (either would have been

forgivable alone, but the two combined, never), managed to blush, smile,

and look furious all at the same time. She cleared her throat and wound up

with a ringing exhortation to every boy and girl in the audience, telling

them to always hold the red, white, and blue high, both in their hands and in

their hearts, and to remember that smoking was a dirty, evil habit which

made you cough. The boys and girls in the audience, most of whom would

be wearing peace medallions and smoking not Camels but marijuana in

another eight years, shuffled their feet and waited for the action to begin.

'Less talk, more eatin'!' someone in the back row called, and there was

another burst of applause-it was heartier this time.

Mayor Charbonneau handed Sylvia a stopwatch and a silver police

whistle, which she would blow at the end of the ten minutes of all-out pie-

eating. Mayor Charbonneau would then step forward and hold up the hand

of the winner.

'Are you ready??' Hizzoner's voice rolled triumphantly through the Great

Day PA and off down Main Street.

The five pie-eaters declared they were ready. 'Are you SET??' Hizzoner

enquired further.

The eaters growled that they were indeed set. Downstreet, a boy set off a

rattling skein of firecrackers.

Mayor Charbonneau raised one pudgy hand and then dropped it 'GO!!!'

Five heads dropped into five pie-plates. The sound was like five large feet

stamping firmly into mud. Wet chomping noises rose on the mild night air

and then were blotted out as the betters and partisans in the crowd began to

cheer on their favourites. And no more than the first pie had been

demolished before most people realised that a possible upset was in the

making.

Lard Ass Hogan, a seven-to-one underdog because of his age and

inexperience, was eating like a boy possessed. His jaws machine-gunned up

crust (the contest rules required that only the top crust of the pie be eaten,

not the bottom), and when that had disappeared, a huge sucking sound

issued from between his lips. It was like the sound of an industrial vacuum

cleaner going to work. Moments later his whole head disappeared into the

pie-plate. He raised it fifteen seconds later to indicate he was done. His

cheeks and forehead were smeared with blueberry juice, and he looked like

an extra in a minstrel show. He was done-done before the legendary Bill

Travis had finished half of his first pie.

Startled applause went up as the Major examined Lard Ass's pie-plate

and pronounced it clean enough. He whipped a second pie into place before

the pacemaker. Lard Ass had gobbled a regulation-size pie in just forty-two

seconds. It was a contest record. He went at the second pie even more

furiously yet, his head bobbing and smooching in the soft blueberry filling,

and Bill Travis threw him a worried glance as he called for his second

blueberry pie. As he told friends later, he felt he was in a real contest for the

first time since 1957, when George Gamache gobbled three pies in four

minutes and then fainted dead away. He had to wonder, he said, if he was

up against a boy or a demon. He thought of the money he had riding on this

and redoubled his efforts. But if Travis had redoubled, Lard Ass had

trebled. Blueberries flew from his second pie-dish, staining the tablecloth

around him like a Jackson Pollock painting. There were blueberries in his

hair, blueberries in his bib, blueberries standing out on his forehead as if, in

an agony of concentration, he had actually begun to sweat blueberries.

'Done!' he cried, lifting his head from his second pie dish before Bill Travis

had even consumed the crust on his new pie.

'Better slow down, boy,' Hizzoner murmured. Charbonneau himself had

ten dollars riding on Bill Travis. 'You got to pace yourself if you want to

hold out.'

It was as if Lard Ass hadn't heard. He tore into his third pie with lunatic

speed, jaws moving with lightning rapidity. And then-But I must interrupt

for a moment to tell you that there was an empty bottle in the medicine

cabinet at Lard Ass Hogan's house. Earlier, that bottle had been three-

quarters full of pearl-yellow castor oil, perhaps the most noxious fluid '. that

the good Lord, in His infinite wisdom, ever allowed upon or beneath the

face of the earth. Lard Ass had emptied that bottle himself, drinking every

last drop and then licking the rim, his mouth twisting, his belly gagging

sourly, his brain filled with thoughts of sweet revenge.

And as he rapidly worked his way through his third pie Calvin Spier,

dead last as predicted, had not yet finished his first), Lard Ass began to

deliberately torture himself with grisly fantasies. He was not eatin' pies at

all; he was eating cowflops. He was eating great big gobs of greasy grimy

gopher-guts. He was eating diced-up woodchuck intestines with blueberry

sauce poured over them. Rancid blueberry sauce.

He finished his third pie and called for his fourth, now one full pie ahead

of the legendary Bill Travis. The fickle crowd, sensing a new and

unexpected champ in the making, began to cheer him on lustily.

But Lard Ass had no hope or intention of winning. He could not have

continued at the pace he was currently setting if his own mother's life had

been the prize. And besides, winning for him was losing; revenge was the

only blue ribbon he sought. His belly groaning with castor oil, his throat

opening and closing sickly, he finished his fourth pie and called for his fifth,

the Ultimate Pie-Blueberries Become Electra, so to speak. He dropped his

head into the dish, breaking the crust, and snuffled blueberries up his nose.

Blueberries went down his shirt. The contents of his stomach seemed to

suddenly gain weight. He chewed up pastry crust and swallowed it. He

inhaled blueberries.

And suddenly the moment of revenge was at hand. His stomach, loaded

beyond endurance, revolted. It clenched like a strong hand encased in a

slick rubber glove. His throat opened.

Lard Ass raised his head.

He grinned at Bill Travis with blue teeth.

Puke rumbled up his throat like a six-ton Peterbilt shooting through a

tunnel.

It roared out of his mouth in a huge blue-and-yellow glurt, warm and

gaily steaming. It covered Bill Travis, who only had time to utter one

nonsense syllable-'Goog' was what it sounded like. Women in the audience

screamed. Calvin Spier, who had watched this unannounced event with a

numb and surprised expression on his face, leaned conversationally over the

table as if to explain to the gaping audience just what was happening, and

puked on the head of Marguerite Charbonneau, the Mayor's wife. She

screamed and backed away, pawing futilely at her hair, which was now

covered with a mixture of crushed berries, baked beans, and partially

digested frankfurters (the latter two had been Cal Spier's dinner). She turned

to her good friend Maria Lavin and threw up on the front of Maria's

buckskin jacket.

In rapid succession, like a replay of the firecrackers:.

Bill Travis blew a great-and seemingly supercharged -jet of vomit out

over the first two rows of spectators, his stunned face proclaiming to one

and all, Man, I just can't believe I'm doing this; Chuck Day, who had

received a generous portion of Bill Travis's surprise gift, threw up on his

Hush Puppies and then blinked at them wonderingly, knowing full well that

stuff would never come off suede; John Wiggins, principal of Gretna

Elementary, opened his blue-lined mouth and said reprovingly: 'Really, this

has YURRRK!' As befitted a man of his breeding and position, he did it in

his own pie-plate; Hizzonner Charbonneau, who found himself suddenly

presiding over what must have seemed more like a stomach-flu hospital

ward than a pie-eating contest, opened his mouth to call the whole thing off

and upchucked all over the microphone. 'Jesus save us,' moaned Sylvia

Dodge, and then her outraged supper-fried clams, cole slaw, butter-and-

sugar corn (two ears' worth), and a generous helping of Muriel Harrington's

Bosco chocolate cake-bolted out the emergency exit and landed with a large

wet splash on the back of the Mayor's Robert Hall suitcoat. Lard Ass

Hogan, now at the absolute apogee of his young life, beamed happily out

over the audience. Puke was everywhere. People staggered around in

drunken circles, holding their throats and making weak cawing noises.

Somebody's pet Pekinese ran past the stage, yapping crazily, and a man

wearing jeans and a Western-style silk shirt threw up on it, nearly drowning

it. Mrs Brockway, the Methodist minister's wife, made a long, bass belching

noise which was followed by a gusher of degenerated roast beef and

mashed potatoes and apple cobbler. The cobbler looked as if it might have

been quite good when it first went down. Jerry Maling, who had come to

see his pet mechanic walk away with all the marbles again, decided to get

the righteous fuck out of this madhouse. He got about fifteen yards before

tripping over a kid's little red wagon and realizing he had landed in a puddle

of warm bile, Jerry tossed his cookies in his own lap and told folks later he

only thanked Providence he had been wearing his coveralls. And Miss

Norman, who taught Latin and English Fundamentals at the Gretna

Consolidated High School, vomited into her own purse in an agony of

propriety.

Lard Ass Hogan watched it all, his large face calm and beaming, his

stomach suddenly sweet and steady with a warm balm it might never know

again-that balm was a feeling of utter and complete satisfaction. He stood

up, took the slightly tacky microphone from the trembling hand of Mayor

Charbonneau, and said

'I declare this contest a draw.' Then he puts the mike down, walks off the

back of the platform, and goes straight home. His mother's there, on account

of she couldn't get a babysitter for Lard Ass's little sister, who was only

two. And as soon as he comes in, all covered with puke and pie drool, still

wearin' his bib, she says, "Davie, did you win?" But he doesn't say a fuckin'

word, you know. Just goes upstairs to his room, locks the door, and lays

down on his bed.'

I downed the last swallow in Chris's Coke and tossed it into the woods.

'Yeah, that's cool, then what happened?' Teddy asked eagerly.

'I don't know.'

'What do you mean, you don't knowT Teddy asked.

'It means it's the end. When you don't know what happens next, that's the

end.'

'Whaaaat? Vern cried. There was an upset, suspicious look on his face,

like he thought maybe he'd just gotten rooked playing penny-up Bingo at

the Topsham Fair. 'What's all this happy crappy? How'd it come out?'

'You have to use your imagination,' Chris said patiently.

'No, I ain't!' Vern said angrily. 'He's supposed to use his imagination! He

made up the fuckin' story!'

'Yeah, what happened to the cat?' Teddy persisted. 'Come on, Gordie, tell

us.'

'I think his dad was at the Pie-Eat and when he came home he beat the

living crap out of Lard Ass.'

'Yeah, right,' Chris said. 'I bet that's just what happened.'

'And,' I said, 'the kids went right on calling him Lard Ass. Except that

maybe some of them started calling him Puke-Yer-Guts, too.'

'That ending sucks,' Teddy said sadly.

'That's why I didn't want to tell it.'

'You could have made it so he shot his father and ran away and joined the

Texas Rangers,' Teddy said. 'How about that?'

Chris and I exchanged a glance. Chris raised one shoulder in a barely

perceptible shrug. 'I guess so,' I said.

'Hey, you got any new Le Dio stories, Gordie?'

'Not just now. Maybe I'll think of some.' I didn't want to upset Teddy, but

I wasn't very interested in checking out what was happening in Le Dio,

either. 'Sorry you didn't go for this one better.'

'Nah, it was good,' Teddy said. 'Right up to the end, it was good. All that

pukin' was really cool.'

'Yeah, that was cool, really gross,' Vern agreed. 'But Teddy's right about

the ending. It was sort of a gyp.'

'Yeah,' I said, and sighed.

Chris stood up. 'Let's do some walking,' he said. It was still bright

daylight, the sky a hot, steely blue, but our shadows had begun to trail out

long. I remember that as a kid, September days always seemed to end much

too soon, catching me by surprise-it was as if something inside my heart

expected it to always be June, with daylight lingering in the sky until almost

nine-thirty. 'What time is it, Gordie?' I looked at my watch and was

astonished to see it was after five. 'Yeah, let's go,' Teddy said. 'But let's

make camp before dark so we can see to get wood and stuff. I'm gettin'

hungry, too.'

'Six-thirty,' Chris promised. 'Okay with you guys?'

It was. We started to walk again, using the cinders beside the tracks now.

Soon the river was so far behind us we couldn't even hear its sound.

Mosquitoes hummed

and I slapped one off my neck. Vern and Teddy were walking up ahead,

working out some sort of complicated comic book trade. Chris was beside

me, hands in his pockets, shirt slapping against his knees and thighs like an

apron.

'I got some Winstons,' he said. 'Hawked 'em off my old man's dresser.

One apiece. For after supper.'

'Yeah? That's boss.'

"That's when a cigarette tastes best,' Chris said. 'After supper.'

'Right.' We walked in silence for a while.

'That's a really fine story,' Chris said suddenly. 'They're just a little too

dumb to understand.'

'No, it's not that hot. It's a mumbler.'

'That's what you always say. Don't give me that bullshit you don't

believe. Are you gonna write it down? The story?'

'Probably. But not for a while. I can't write 'em down right after I tell 'em.

It'll

keep.'

'What Vern said? About the ending being a gyp?'

'Yeah?'

Chris laughed. 'Life's a gyp, you know it? I mean, look at us.'

'Nah, we have a great time.'

'Sure,' Chris said. 'All the fuckin' time, you wet.'

I laughed. Chris did, too.

They come outta you just like bubbles out of soda-pop,' he said after a

while.

'What does?' But I thought I knew what he meant.

'The stories. That really bugs me, man. It's like you could tell a million

stories and still only get the ones on top. You'll be a great writer someday,

Gordie.'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Yeah, you will. Maybe you'll even write about us guys if you ever get

hard up for material.'

'Have to be pretty fuckin' hard up.' I gave him the elbow.

There was another period of silence and then he asked suddenly: 'You

ready for school?'

I shrugged. Who ever was? You got a little excited thinking about going

back, seeing your friends; you were curious about your new teachers and

what they would be like-pretty young things just out of teachers' college

that you could rag or some old topkick that had been there since the Alamo,

In a funny way you could even get excited about the long droning classes,

because as the summer vacation neared its end you sometimes got bored

enough to believe you could learn something. But summer boredom was

nothing like the school boredom that always set in by the end of the second

week, and by the beginning of the third week you got down to the real

business: Could you hit Stinky Fiske in the back of the head with your art-

gum while the teacher was putting The Principal Exports of South America

on the board? How many good loud squeaks could you get off on the

varnished surface of your desk if your hands were real sweaty? Who could

cut the loudest farts in the locker room while changing up for phys ed? How

many girls could you get to play Who Goosed the Moose during lunch

hour? Higher learning, baby.

'Junior High,' Chris said. 'And you know what, Gordie? By next June,

we'll all be quits.'

'What are you talking about? Why would that happen?'

'It's not gonna be like grammar school, that's why. You'll be in the college

courses. Me and Teddy and Vern, we'll all be in the shop courses, playing

pocket-pool

with the rest of the retards, making ashtrays and birdhouses. Vern might

even have to go into Remedial. You'll meet a lot of new guys. Smart guys.

That's just the way it works, Gordie. That's how they got it set up.'

'Meet a lot of pussies is what you mean,' I said.

He gripped my arm. 'No, man. Don't say that. Don't even think that.

They'll get your stories. Not like Vern and Teddy.'

'Fuck the stories. I'm not going in with a lot of pussies. No sir.'

'If you don't, then you're an asshole.'

'What's asshole about wanting to be with your friends?'

He looked at me thoughtfully, as if deciding whether or not to tell me

something. We had slowed down; Vern and Teddy had pulled almost half a

mile ahead. The sun, lower now, came at us through the overlacing trees in

broken, dusty shafts, turning everything gold -but it was a tawdry gold,

dimestore gold, if you can dig that. The tracks stretched ahead of us in the

gloom that was just starting to gather -they seemed almost to twinkle. Star-

pricks of light stood out on them here and there, as if some nutty rich guy

masquerading as a common labourer had decided to embed a diamond in

the steel every sixty yards or so. It was still hot. The sweat rolled off us,

slicking our bodies.

'It's asshole if your friends can drag you down,' Chris said finally. 'I know

about you and your folks. They don't give a shit about you. Your big brother

was the one they cared about. Like my dad, when Frank got thrown into the

stockade in Portsmouth. That was when he started always bein' mad at us

other kids and hitting us all the time. Your dad doesn't beat on you, but

maybe that's even worse. He's got you asleep. You could tell him you were

enrolling in the fuckin' shop division and you know what he'd do? He'd turn

to the next page in his paper and say, Well, that's nice, Gordon, go ask your

mother what's for dinner. And don't try to tell me different I've met him.'

I didn't try to tell him different. It's scary to find out that someone else,

even a friend, knows just how things are with you. 'You're just a kid, Gordie

'Gee, thanks, Dad.'

'I wish to fuck I was your father!' he said angrily. 'You wouldn't go

around talking about taking those stupid shop courses if I was! It's like God

gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and He said, This is

what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless

somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it

then maybe I ought to.'

His face looked like he was expecting me to take a swing at him; it was

set and unhappy in the green-gold late afternoon light. He had broken the

cardinal rule for kids in those days. You could say anything about another

kid, you could rank him to the dogs and back, but you didn't say a bad word

ever about his mom and dad. That was the Fabled Automatic, the same way

not inviting your Catholic friends home to dinner on Friday unless you'd

checked first to make sure you weren't having meat was the Fabled

Automatic. If a kid ranked out your Mom and Dad, you had to feed him a

knuckle sandwich.

"Those stories you tell, they're no good to anybody but you, Gordie. If

you go along with us just because you don't want the gang to break up,

you'll wind up just another grunt, making Cs to get on the teams. You'll get

to High and take the same fuckin' shop courses and throw erasers and pull

your meat along with the rest of the grunts. Get detentions. Fuckin'

suspensions. And after a while all you'll care about is gettin' a car so you

can take some skag to the hops or down to the fuckin' Twin Bridges Tavern.

Then you'll knock her up and spend the rest of your life in the mill or

some fuckin' shoeshop in Auburn or maybe even up to Hillcrest pluckin'

chickens. And that pie story will never get written down. Nothin'll get

written down. 'Cause you'll just be another wiseguy with shit for brains.'

Chris Chambers was twelve when he said all that to me. But while he

was saying it his face crumpled and folded into something older, oldest,

ageless. He spoke tonelessly, colourlessly, but nevertheless, what he said

struck terror into my bowels. It was as if he had lived that whole life

already, -that life where they tell you to step right up and spin the Wheel of

Fortune, and it spins so pretty and the guy steps on a pedal and it comes up

double zeros, house number, everybody loses. They give you a free pass

and then turn on the rain machine, pretty funny, huh, a joke even Vern

Tessio could appreciate.

He grabbed my naked arm and his fingers closed tight. They dug grooves

in my flesh.

They ground at the bones. His eyes were hooded and dead-so dead, man,

that he might have just fallen out of his own coffin.

'I know what people think of my family in this town. I know what they

think of me and what they expect. Nobody even asked me if I took the

milk-money that time. I just got a three-day vacation.'

'Did you take it?' I asked. I had never asked him before, and if you had

told me I ever would, I would have called you crazy. The words came out in

a little dry bullet.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Yeah, I took it.' He was silent for a moment, looking

ahead at Teddy and Vern. 'You knew I took it, Teddy knew, everybody

knew. Even Vern knew, I think.'

I started to deny it, and then closed my mouth. He was right. No matter

what I might have said to my mother and father about how a person was

supposed to be innocent until proved guilty, I had known.

'Then maybe I was sorry and tried to give it back,' Chris said.

I stared at him, my eyes widening. 'You tried to give it back!'

'Maybe, I said. Just maybe. And maybe I took it to old lady Simons and

told her, and maybe the money was all there and I got a three-day vacation

anyway, because the money never showed up. And maybe the next week

old lady Simons had this brand-new skirt on when she came to school.'

I stared at Chris, speechless with horror. He smiled at me, but it was a

crimped, terrible smile that never touched his eyes.

'Just maybe,' he said, but I remembered the new skirt-a light brown

paisley, sort of full. I remembered thinking that it made old lady Simons

look younger, almost pretty.

'Chris, how much was that milk-money?'

'Almost seven bucks.'

'Christ,' I whispered.

'So I just say that I stole the milk-money but then old lady Simons stole it

from me. Just suppose. Then suppose I told that story. Me, Chris Chambers.

Kid brother of Frank Chambers and Eyeball Chambers. You think anybody

would have believed it?'

'No way,' I whispered. 'Jesus, Chris!'

He smiled his wintry, awful smile. 'And do you think that bitch would

have dared try something like that if it had been one of those dootchbags

from up on The View that had taken the money?'

'No,' I said.

'Yeah. If it had been one of them, Simons would have said 'kay, 'kay,

we'll forget it this time, but we're gonna spank your wrist real hard and if

you ever do it

again we'll have to spank both wrists. But me well, maybe she had her

eye on that skirt for a long time.

Anyway, she saw her chance and she took it. I was the stupid one for

even trying to give that money back. But I never thought I never thought

that a teacher oh who gives a fuck, anyway? Why am I even -talkin' about

it?'

He swiped an arm angrily across his eyes and I realized he was almost

crying.

'Chris,' I said, 'why don't you go into the college courses? You're smart

enough.'

'They decide all of that in the office. And in their smart little conferences.

The teachers, they sit around in this big circle-jerk and all they say is Yeah,

Yeah, Right, Right All they give a fuck about is whether you behaved

yourself in grammar school and what the town thinks of your family. All

they're deciding is whether or not you'll contaminate all those precious

college-course dootchbags. But maybe I'll try to work myself up. I don't

know if I could do it, but I might try. Because I want to get out of Castle

Rock and go to college and never see my old man or any of my brothers

again. I want to go someplace where nobody knows me and I don't have any

black marks against me before I start. But I don't know if I can do it.'

'Why not?'

'People. People drag you down.'

'Who?' I asked, thinking he must mean the teachers, or adult monsters

like Miss Simons, who had wanted a new skirt, or maybe his brother

Eyeball who hung around with Ace and Billy and Charlie and the rest, or

maybe his own Mom and Dad.

But he said: 'Your friends drag you down, Gordie. Don't you know that?'

He pointed at Vern and Teddy, who were standing and waiting for us to

catch up. They were laughing about something; in fact, Vern was just about

busting a gut.

'Your friends do. They're like drowning guys that are holding on to your

legs. You can't save them. You can only drown with them.'

'Come on, you fuckin' slowpokes!' Vern shouted, still laughing.

'Yeah, comin'!' Chris called, and before I could say anything else, he

began to run. I ran, too, but he caught up to them before I could catch up to

him.

We went another mile and then decided to camp for the night. There was

still some daylight left, but nobody really wanted to use it. We were pooped

from the scene at the dump and from our scare on the train trestle, but it was

more than that. We were in Harlow now, in the woods. Somewhere up

ahead was a dead kid, probably mangled and covered with flies. Maggots,

too, by this time. Nobody wanted to get too close to him with the night

coming on. I had read somewhere-in an Algernon Blackwood story, I think-

that a guy's ghost hangs out around his dead body until that body is given a

decent Christian burial, and there was no way I wanted to wake up in the

night and confront the glowing, disembodied ghost of Ray Brower,

moaning and gibbering and floating among the dark and rustling pines. By

stopping here we figured there had to be at least ten miles between us and

him, and of course all four of us knew there were no such things as ghosts,

but ten miles seemed just about far enough in case what everybody knew

was wrong.

Vern, Chris, and Teddy gathered wood and got a modest little campfire

going on a bed of cinders. Chris scraped a bare patch all around the fire-the

woods were powder-dry, and he didn't want to take any chances. While they

were doing that I sharpened some sticks and made what my brother Denny

used to call 'Pioneer Drumsticks'-lumps of hamburger pushed into the ends

of green branches. The three of them laughed and bickered over their

woodcraft (which was almost nil; there was a Castle Rock Boy Scout troop,

but most of the kids who hung around our vacant lot considered it to be an

organization made up mostly of pussies), arguing about whether it was

better to cook over flames or over coals (a moot point; we were too hungry

to wait for coals), whether dried moss would work as kindling, what they

would do if they used up all the matches before they got the fire to stay lit.

Teddy claimed he could make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Chris

claimed he was so full of shit he squeaked. They didn't have to try; Vern got

the small pile of twigs and dry moss to catch from the second match. The

day was perfectly still and there was no wind to puff out the light. We all

took turns feeding the thin flames until they began to grow stouter on wrist-

thick chunks of wood fetched from an old deadfall some thirty yards into

the forest When the flames began to die back a little bit, I stuck the sticks

holding the Pioneer Drumsticks firmly into the ground at an angle over the

fire. We sat around watching them as they shimmered and dripped and

finally began to brown. Our stomachs made pre-dinner conversation.

Unable to wait until they were really cooked, we each took one of them,

stuck it in a roll, and yanked the hot stick out of the centre. They were

charred outside, raw inside, and totally delicious. We wolfed them down

and wiped the grease from our mouths with our bare arms. Chris opened his

pack and took out a tin Band-Aids box (the pistol was way at the bottom of

his pack, and because he hadn't told Vern and Teddy, I guessed it was to be

our secret). He opened it and gave each of us a battered Winston. We lit

them with flaming twigs from the fire and then leaned back, men of the

world, watching the cigarette smoke drift away into the soft twilight. None

of us inhaled because we might cough and that would mean a day or two of

ragging from the others. And it was pleasant enough just to drag and blow,

hawking into the fire to hear the sizzle (that was the summer I learned how

you can pick out someone who is just learning to smoke: if you're new at it

you spit a lot). We were feeling good. We smoked the Winstons down to the

filters, then tossed them into the fire. 'Nothin' like a smoke after a meal,'

Teddy said.

'Fucking-A,' Vern agreed.

Crickets had started to hum in the green gloom. I looked up at the lane of

sky visible through the railroad cut and saw that the blue was now bruising

towards purple. Seeing that outrider of twilight made me feel sad and calm

at the same: me, brave but not really brave, comfortably lonely.

We tramped down a flat place in the underbrush beside the embankment

and laid out our bedrolls. Then, for an hour or so, we fed the fire and talked,

the kind of talk you can never quite remember once you get past fifteen and

discover girls. We talked about who was the best dragger in Castle Rock, if

Boston could maybe stay out of the cellar this year, and about the summer

just past. Teddy told about the time he had been at White's Beach in

Brunswick and some kid had hit his head while diving off the float and

almost drowned. We discussed at some length the relative merits of the

teachers we had had. We agreed that Mr. Brooks was the biggest pussy in

Castle Rock Elementary-he would just about cry if you sassed him back. On

the other hand, there was Mrs. Cote (pronounced Cody)-she was just about

the meanest bitch God had ever set down on the earth. Vern said he'd heard

she hit a kid so hard two years ago that the kid almost went blind. I looked

at Chris, wondering if he would say anything about Miss Simons, but he

didn't say anything at all, and he didn't see me looking at him-he was

looking at Vern and nodding soberly at Vern's story.

We didn't talk about Ray Brower as the dark drew down, but I was

thinking about him. There's something horrible and fascinating about the

way dark comes to the woods, its coming unsoftened by headlights or

streetlights or houselights or neon. It comes with no mothers' voices, calling

for their kids to leave off and come on in now, to herald it. If you're used to

the town, the coming of the dark in the woods seems more like a natural

disaster than a natural phenomenon; it rises like the Castle River rises in the

spring. And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower in this light-or lack

of it-what I felt was not queasiness or fear that he would suddenly appear

before us, a green and gibbering banshee whose purpose was to drive us

back the way we had come before we could disturb his-its-peace, but a

sudden and unexpected wash of pity that he should be so alone and so

defenceless in the dark that was now coming over our side of the earth. If

something wanted to eat him, it would. His mother wasn't here to stop that

from happening, and neither was his father, nor Jesus Christ in the company

of all the saints. He was dead and he was all alone, flung off the railroad

tracks and into the ditch, and I realized that if I didn't stop thinking about it,

I was going to cry. So I told a Le Dio story, made up on the spot and not

very good, and when it ended as most of my Le Dio stories did, with one

lone American dogface coughing out a dying declaration of patriotism and

love for the girl back home into the sad and wise face of the platoon

sergeant, it was not the white, scared face of some pfc from Castle Rock or

White River Junction I saw in my mind's eye but the face of a much

younger boy, already dead, his eyes closed, his features troubled, a rill of

blood running from the left corner of his mouth to his jawline. And in back

of him, instead of the shattered shops and churches of my Le Dio

dreamscape, I saw only dark forest and the cindered railway bed bulking

against the starry sky like a prehistoric burial mound.

I came awake in the middle of the night, disoriented, wondering why it

was so chilly in my bedroom and who had left the windows open. Denny,

maybe. I had been dreaming of Denny, something about body-surfing at

Harrison State Park. But it had been four years ago that we had done that.

This wasn't my room: this was someplace else. Somebody was holding

me in a mighty bearhug. Somebody else was pressed against my back, and a

shadowy third was crouched beside me, head cocked in a listening attitude.

'What the fuck?' I asked in honest puzzlement.

A long drawn-out groan in answer. It sounded like Vern.

That brought things into focus, and I remembered where I was but what

was everybody doing awake in the middle of the night? Or had I only been

asleep for seconds? No, that couldn't be, because a thin sliver of moon was

floating dead centre in an inky sky.

'Don't let it get me,' Vern gibbered. 'I swear I'll be a good boy, I won't do

nothin' bad, I'll put the ring up before I take a piss, I'll I'll' With some

astonishment I realized that I was listening to a prayer-or at least the Vern

Tessio equivalent of a prayer.

I sat bolt upright, scared. 'Chris?'

'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said. He was the one crouching and listening. 'It's

nothing.'

'Oh yes it is,' Teddy said ominously. 'It's something.'

'What is?' I asked. I was still sleepy and disoriented, unstrung from my

place in space and time. It scared me that I had come in late on whatever

had developed-too late to defend myself properly, maybe.

Then, as if to answer my question, a long and hollow scream rose

languidly from the woods-it was the sort of scream you might expect from a

woman dying in extreme agony and extreme fear.

'Oh-dear-to-Jesus!' Vern whimpered, his voice high and filled with tears.

He reapplied the bearhug that had wakened me, making it hard for me to

breathe and adding to my own terror. I threw him loose with an effort but he

scrambled right back beside me like a puppy which can't think of anyplace

else to go.

'It's that Brower kid,' Teddy whispered hoarsely. 'His ghost's out walkin'

in the

woods.'

'Oh God!' Vern screamed, apparently not crazy about that idea at all. 'I

promise I won't hawk no more dirty books out of Dahlie's Market! I

promise I won't give my carrots to the dog no more I I I' He floundered

there, wanting to bribe God with everything but unable to think of anything

really good in the extremity of his fear. 'I won't smoke no more unfiltered

cigarettes! I won't say no bad swears! I won't put my Bazooka in the offerin

plate! I won't -'

'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said, and beneath his usual authoritative toughness

I could hear the hollow boom of awe. I wondered if his arms and back and

belly were as stiff with gooseflesh as my own were, and if the hair on the

nape of his neck was trying to stand up in hackles, as mine was.

Vern's voice dropped to a whisper as he continued to expand the reforms

he planned to institute if God would only let him live through this night.

'It's a bird, isn't it?' I asked Chris.

'No. At least, I don't think so. I think it's a wildcat My dad says they

scream bloody murder when they're getting ready to mate. Sounds like a

woman, doesn't it?'

'Yeah,' I said. My voice hitched in the middle of the word and two ice-

cubes broke off in the gap.

'But no woman could scream that loud,' Chris said and then added

helplessly: 'Could she, Gordie?'

'It's his ghost,' Teddy whispered again. His eyeglasses reflected the

moonlight in weak, somehow dreamy smears. 'I'm gonna go look for it'

I don't think he was serious, but we took no chances. When he started to

get up, Chris and I hauled him back down. Perhaps we were too rough with

him, but our muscles had been turned to cables with fear.

'Let me up, fuckheads!' Teddy hissed, struggling. 'If I say I wanna go

look for it, then I'm gonna go look for it! I wanna see it! I wanna see the

ghost! I wanna see it -

The wild, sobbing cry rose into the night again, cutting the air like a knife

with a crystal blade, freezing us with our hands on Teddy-if he'd been a

flag, we would have looked like that picture of the Marines claiming Iwo

Jima. The scream climbed with a crazy ease through octave after octave,

finally reaching a glassy, freezing edge. It hung there for a moment and then

whirled back down again, disappearing into an

impossible bass register that buzzed like a monstrous honeybee. This was

followed by a burst of what sounded like mad laughter and then there was

silence again.

'Jesus H Baldheaded Christ,' Teddy whispered, and he talked no more of

going into the woods to see what was making that screaming noise. All four

of us huddled up together and I thought of running. I doubt if I was the only

one. If we had been tenting in Vern's field-where our folks thought we

were-we probably would have run. But Castle Rock was too far, and the

thought of trying to run across that trestle in the dark made my blood freeze.

Running deeper into Harlow and closer to the corpse of Ray Brower was

equally unthinkable. We were stuck. If there was a ha'ant out there in the

woods-what my dad called a Goosalum-and it wanted us, it would probably

get us.

Chris proposed we keep a guard and everyone was agreeable to that. We

flipped for watches and Vern got the first one. I got the last. Vern sat up

cross-legged by the husk of the campfire while the rest of us lay down

again. We huddled together like sheep.

I was positive that sleep would be impossible, but I did sleep-a light,

uneasy sleep that skimmed through unconsciousness like a sub with its

periscope up. My half-sleeping dreams were populated with wild cries that

might have been real or might have only been products of my imagination. I

saw-or thought I saw-something white and shapeless steal through the trees

like a grotesquely ambulatory bedsheet.

At last I slipped into something I knew was a dream. Chris and I were

swimming at White's Beach, a gravel-pit in Brunswick that had been turned

into a miniature lake when the gravel-diggers struck water. It was where

Teddy had seen the kid hit his head and almost drown.

In my dream we were out over our heads, stroking lazily along, with a

hot July sun blazing down. From behind us, on the float, came cries and

shouts and yells of laughter as kids climbed and dived or climbed and were

pushed. I could hear the empty kerosene drums that held the float up

clanging and booming together- a sound not unlike that of churchbeils,

which are so solemn and emptily profound. On the sand-and-gravel beach,

oiled bodies lay face down on blankets, little kids with buckets squatted on

the verge of the water or sat happily flipping muck into their hair with

plastic shovels, and teenagers clustered in grinning groups, watching the

young girls promenade endlessly back and forth in pairs and trios, never

alone, the secret places of their bodies wrapped in Jantzen tank suits. People

walked up the hot sand on the balls of their feet, wincing, to the snackbar.

They came back with chips, Devil Dogs, Red Ball Popsicles.

Mrs. Cote drifted past us on an inflatable rubber raft. She was lying on

her back, dressed in her typical September-to-June school uniform: a grey

two-piece suit with a thick sweater instead of a blouse under the jacket, a

flower pinned over one almost nonexistent breast, thick support hose the

colour of Canada Mints on her legs. Her black old lady's high-heeled shoes

were trailing in the water, making small Vs. Her hair was blue-rinsed, like

my mother's, and done up in those tight, medicinal-smelling clockspring

curls. Her glasses flashed brutally in the sun.

'Watch your steps, boys,' she said. 'Watch your steps or I'll hit you hard

enough to strike you blind. I can do that; I have been given that power by

the school board. Now, Mr. Chambers, "Mending Wall", if you please. By

rote.'

'I tried to give the money back,' Chris said. 'Old lady Simons said okay,

but she took it!

Do you hear me? She took it! Now what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to whack her blind?'

' "Mending Wall," Mr. Chambers, if you please. By rote.' Chris threw me

a despairing glance, as if to say Didn't I tell you it would be this way?, and

then began to tread water.

He began.' "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends the

frozen groundswell under it -"' And then his head went under, his reciting

mouth filling with water. He popped back up, crying: 'Help me, Gordie!

Help me!' Then he was dragged under again. Looking into the clear water I

could see two bloated, naked corpses holding his ankles. One was Vern and

the other was Teddy, and their open eyes were as blank and pupilless as the

eyes of Greek statues. Their small pre-pubescent penises floated limply up

from their distended bellies like albino strands of kelp. Chris's head broke

water again. He held one hand up limply to me and voiced a screaming,

womanish cry that rose and rose, ululating in the hot sunny summer air. I

looked wildly towards the beach but nobody had heard. The lifeguard, his

bronzed, athletic body lolling attractively on the seat at the top of his

whitewashed cruciform wooden tower, just went on smiling down at a girl

in a red bathing suit. Chris's scream turned into a bubbling waterchoked

gurgle as the corpses pulled him under again. And as they dragged him

down to black water I could see his rippling, distorted eyes turned up to me

in pleading agony; I could see his white starfish hands held helplessly up to

the sun-burnished roof of the water. But instead of diving down and trying

to save him, I stroked madly for the shore, or at least to a place where the

water would not be over my head. Before I could get there-before I could

even get close -I felt a soft, rotted, implacable hand wrap itself around my

calf and begin to pull. A scream built up in my chest but before I could

utter it, the dream washed away into a grainy facsimile of reality. It was

Teddy with his hand on my leg. He was shaking me awake. It was my

watch.

Still half in the dreams, almost talking in my sleep, I asked him thickly:

'You alive, Teddy?'

'No. I'm dead and you're a black nigger,' he said crossly. It dispelled the

last of the dream. I sat up by the campfire and Teddy lay down.

The others slept heavily through the rest of the night. I was in and out,

dozing, waking, dozing again. The night was far from silent; I heard the

triumphant screech-squawk of a pouncing owl, the tiny cry of some small

animal perhaps about to be eaten, a larger something blundering wildly

through the undergrowth. Under all of this, a steady tone, were the crickets.

There were no more screams. I dozed and woke, woke and dozed, and I

suppose if I had been discovered standing such a slipshod watch in Le Dio,

I probably would have been court-martialed and shot.

I snapped more solidly out of my last doze and became aware that

something was different. It took a moment or two to figure it out: although

the moon was down, I could see my hands resting on my jeans. My watch

said quarter to five. It was dawn. I stood, hearing my spine crackle, walked

two dozen feet away from the lumped-together bodies of my friends, and

pissed into a clump of sumac. I was starting to shake the night-willies; I

could feel them sliding away. It was a fine feeling.

I scrambled up the cinders to the railroad tracks and sat on one of the

rails, idly chucking cinders between my feet, in no hurry to wake the others.

At that precise moment the new day felt too good to share.

Morning came on apace. The noise of the crickets began to drop, and the

shadows under the trees and bushes evaporated like puddles after a shower.

The air had that peculiar lack of taste that presages the latest hot day in a

famous series of hot days. Birds that had maybe cowered all night just as

we had done now began to twitter self-importantly. A wren landed on top of

the deadfall from which we had taken our firewood, preened itself, and then

flew off.

I don't know how long I sat there on that rail, watching the purple steal

out of the sky as noiselessly as it had stolen in the evening before. Long

enough for my butt to start complaining, anyway. I was about to get up

when I looked to my right and saw a deer standing in the railroad bed not

ten yards from me.

My heart went up into my throat so high that I think I could have put my

hand in my mouth and touched it. My stomach and genitals filled with a

hot, dry excitement. I didn't move. I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. Her

eyes weren't brown but a dark, dusty black-the kind of velvet you see

backgrounding jewellery displays. Her small ears were scuffed suede. She

looked serenely at me, head slightly lowered in what I took for curiosity,

seeing a kid with his hair in a sleep-scarecrow of whirls and many-tined

cowlicks, wearing jeans with cuffs and a brown khaki shirt with the elbows

mended and the collar turned up in the hoody tradition of the day. What I

was seeing was some sort of gift, something given with a carelessness that

was appalling.

We looked at each other for a long time I think it was a long time. Then

she turned and walked off to the other side of the tracks, white bobtail

flipping insouciantly. She found grass and began to crop. I couldn't believe

it. She had begun to crop. She didn't look back at me and didn't need to; I

was frozen solid.

Then the rail started to thrum under my ass and bare seconds later the

doe's head came up, cocked back towards Castle Rock. She stood there, her

branch-black nose working on the air, coaxing it a little. Then she was gone

in three gangling leaps, vanishing into the woods with no sound but one

rotted branch, which broke with a sound like a track ref s starter-gun.

I sat there, looking mesmerized at the spot where she had been, until the

actual sound of the freight came up through the stillness. Then I skidded

back down the bank to where the others were sleeping.

The freight's slow, loud passage woke them up, yawning and scratching.

There was some funny, nervous talk about 'the case of the screaming ghost',

as Chris called it, but not as much as you might imagine. In daylight it

seemed more foolish than interesting-almost embarrassing. Best forgotten.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them about the deer, but I ended up

not doing it. That was one thing I kept to myself. I've never spoken or

written of it until just now, today. And I have to tell you that it seems a

lesser thing written down, damn near inconsequential. But for me it was the

best part of that trip, the cleanest part, and it was a moment I found myself

returning to, almost helplessly, when there was trouble in my life-my first

day in the bush in Viet Nam, and this fellow walked into the clearing where

we were with his hand over his nose and when he took his hand away there

was no nose there because it had been shot off; the time the doctor told us

our youngest son might be hydrocephalic (he turned out just to have an

oversized

head, thank God); the long, crazy weeks before my mother died. I would

find my thoughts turning back to that morning, the scuffed suede of her

ears, the white flash of her tail. But five hundred million Red Chinese don't

give a shit, right? The most important things are the hardest to say, because

words diminish them. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things

in your life.

The tracks now bent south-west and ran through tangles of second-

growth fir and heavy underbrush. We got a breakfast of late blackberries

from some of these bushes, but berries never fill you up; your stomach just

gives them a thirty-minute option and then begins growling again. We went

back to the tracks-it was about eight o'clock by then-and took five. Our

mouths were a dark purple and our naked torsos were scratched from the

blackberry brambles. Vern wished glumly aloud for a couple of fried eggs

with bacon on the side.

That was the last day of the heat, and I think it was the worst of all. The

early scud of clouds melted away and by nine o'clock the sky was a pale

steel colour that made you feel hotter just looking at it The sweat rolled and

ran from our chests and backs, leaving clean streaks through the

accumulated soot and grime. Mosquitoes and blackflies whirled and dipped

around our heads in aggravating clouds. Knowing that we had eight, maybe

ten miles to go didn't make us feel any better. Yet the fascination of the

thing drew us on and kept us walking faster than we had any business

doing, in that heat. We were all crazy to see that kid's body -I can't put it

any more simply or honestly than that. Whether it was harmless or whether

it turned out to have the power to murder sleep with a hundred mangled

dreams, we wanted to see it. I think that we had come to believe we

deserved to see it.

It was about nine-thirty when Teddy and Chris spotted water up ahead-

they shouted to Vern and me. We ran over to where they were standing.

Chris was laughing, delighted.

'Look there! Beavers did that!' He pointed.

It was the work of beavers, all right. A large-bore culvert ran under the

railroad embankment a little way ahead, and the beavers had sealed the

right end with one of their neat and industrious little dams-sticks and

branches cemented together with leaves, twigs, and dried mud. Beavers are

busy little fuckers, all right Behind the dam was a clear and shining pool of

water, brilliantly mirroring the sunlight Beaver houses humped up and out

of the water in several places-they looked like wooden igloos. A small

creek trickled into the far end of the pool, and the trees which bordered it

were gnawed a clean bone-white to a height of almost three feet in places.

'Railroad'll clean this shit out pretty soon,' Chris said.

'Why?' Vern asked.

"They can't have a pool here,' Chris said, 'it'd undercut their previous

railroad line. That's why they put that culvert in there to start with. They'll

shoot them some beavers and scare off the rest and then knock out their

dam. Then this'll go back to being a bog, like it probably was before.'

'I think that eats the meat,' Teddy said.

Chris shrugged. 'Who cares about beavers? Not the Great Western and

Southern Maine, that's for sure.'

'You think it's deep enough to swim in?' Vern asked, looking hungrily at

the

water.

'One way to find out,' Teddy said.

'Who goes first?' I asked.

'Me!' Chris said. He went running down the bank, kicking off his

sneakers and untying his shirt from around his waist with a jerk. He pushed

his pants and undershorts down with a single shove of his thumbs. He

balanced, first on one leg and them on the other, to get his socks. Then he

made a shallow dive. He came up shaking his head to get his wet hair out of

his eyes. 'It's fuckin' great!' he shouted.

'How deep?' Teddy called back. He had never learned to swim.

Chris stood up in the water and his shoulders broke the surface. I saw

something on one of them- a blackish-greyish something. I decided it was a

piece of mud and dismissed it.

If I had looked more closely I could have saved myself a lot of

nightmares later on.

'Come on in, you chickens!'

He turned and thrashed off across the pool in a clumsy breast-stroke,

turned over, and thrashed back. By then we were all getting undressed. Vern

was in next, then me.

Hitting the water was fantastic-clean and cool. I swam across to Chris,

loving the silky feel of having nothing on but water. I stood up and we

grinned into each other's faces.

'Boss!' We said it at exactly the same instant.

'Fuckin' jerkoff,' he said, splashed water in my face, and swam off the

other

way.

We goofed off in the water for almost half an hour before we realized that

the pond was full of bloodsuckers. We dived, swam under water, ducked

each other. We never knew a thing. Then Vern swam into the shallower part,

went under, and stood on his hands.

When his legs broke water in a shaky but triumphant V, I saw that they

were covered with blackish-grey lumps, just like the one I had seen on

Chris's shoulder. They were slugs-big ones.

Chris's mouth dropped open, and I felt all the blood in my body go as

cold as

dry ice.

Teddy screamed, his face going Dale. Then all three of us were thrashing

for the bank, going just as fast as we could. I know more about freshwater

slugs now than I did then, but the fact that they are mostly harmless has

done nothing to allay the almost insane horror of them I've had ever since

that day in the beaver-pool. They carry a local anaesthetic and an

anticoagulant in their alien saliva, which means that the host never feels a

thing when they attach themselves. If you don't happen to see them they'll

go on feeding until their swelled, loathsome bodies fall off you, sated, or

until they actually burst.

We pulled ourselves up on the bank and Teddy went into a hysterical

paroxysm as he looked down at himself. He was screaming as he picked the

leeches off his naked body.

Vern broke the water and looked at us, puzzled. 'What the hell's wrong

with hi

'Leeches!' Teddy screamed, pulling two of them off his rrembling thighs

and throwing them just as far as he could. Dirty motherfuckin'

bloodsuckers!' His voice broke shrilly on the last word.

'OhGodOhGodOhGod!' Vern cried. He paddled across the pool and

stumbled

out.

I was still cold; the heat of the day had been suspended. I kept telling

myself to catch hold. Not to get screaming. Not to be a pussy. I picked half

a dozen off my arms and several more off my chest.

Chris turned his back to me. 'Gordie? Are there any more? Take 'em off if

there are, please, Gordie!' There were more, five or six, running down his

back like grotesque black buttons. I pulled their soft, boneless bodies off

him.

I brushed even more off my legs, then got Chris to do my back.

I was starting to relax a little and that was when I looked down at

myself and saw the granddaddy of them all clinging to my testicles, its body

swelled to four times its normal size. Its blackish-grey skin had gone a

bruised purplish-red. That was when I began to lose control. Not outside, at

least not in any big way, but inside, where it counts. I brushed its slick,

glutinous body with the back of my hand. It held on. I tried to do it again

and couldn't bring myself to actually touch it I turned to Chris, tried to

speak, couldn't I pointed instead. His cheeks, already ashy, went whiter still.

'I can't get it off,' I said through numb lips. 'You can you'

But he backed away, shaking his head, his mouth twisted 'I can't, Gordie,'

he said, unable to take his eyes away. 'I'm sorry but I can't No. Oh. No.' He

turned away, bowed with one hand pressed to his midsection like the butler

in a musical comedy, and was sick in a stand of juniper bushes.

You got to hold onto yourself, I thought, looking at the leech that hung

off me like a crazy beard. Its body was still visibly swelling. You got to

hold onto yourself and get him. Be tough. It's the last one. The. Last. One.

I reached down again and picked it off and it burst between my fingers.

My own blood ran across my palm and inner wrist in a warm flood. I began

to cry. Still crying, I walked back to my clothes and put them or. I wanted to

stop crying, but I just didn't seem able to turn off the waterworks. Then the

shakes set in, making it worse. Vern ran up to me, still naked. 'They off,

Gordie? They off me? They off me?' He twirled in front of me like an

insane dancer on carnival stage. They off? Huh? Huh? They off me,

Gordie?'

His eyes kept going past me, as wide and white as the eyes of a plaster

horse on a merry-go-round.

I nodded that they were and just kept on crying. It seemed that crying

was going to be my new career. I tucked my shirt in and then buttoned it all

the way to the neck. I put on my socks and my sneakers. Little by little the

tears began to slow down. Finally there was nothing left but a few hitches

and moans, and then they stopped, too. Chris walked over to me, wiping his

mouth with a handful of elm leaves. His eyes were wide and mute and

apologetic.

When we were all dressed we just stood there looking at each other for a

moment, and then we began to climb the railroad embankment. I looked

back once at the burst leech lying on top of the tramped-down bushes where

we had danced and screamed and groaned them off. It looked deflated but

still ominous.

Fourteen years later I sold my first novel and made my first trip to New

York. 'It's going to be a three-day celebration,' my new editor told me over

the phone. 'People slinging bullshit will be summarily shot' But of course it

was three days of unmitigated bullshit. I went away thinking the publishing

house believed me to be the

reincarnation of Thomas Wolfe; they saw me off with perhaps other

things in mind-paperback sales in the millions, for instance.

While I was there I wanted to do all the standard out-of-towner things-see

a stage show at Radio City Music Hall, go to the top of the Empire State

Building (fuck the World Trade Center; the building King Kong climbed in

1933 is always gonna be the tallest one in the world for me), visit Times

Square by night. Keith, my editor, seemed more than pleased to show his

city off. The last touristy thing we did was to take a ride on the Staten

Island Ferry, and while leaning on the rail I happened to look down and see

scores of used condoms floating on the mild swells. And I had a moment of

almost total recall-or perhaps it was an actual incidence of time-travel.

Either way, for one second I was Literally in the past, pausing halfway up

that embankment and looking back at the burst leech: dead, deflated but

still ominous.

Keith must have seen something in my face because he said: 'Not very

pretty, are they?'

I only shook my head, wanting to tell him not to apologize, wanting to

tell him that you didn't have to come to the Apple and ride the ferry to see

used rubbers, wanting to say: The only reason anyone writes stories is so

they can understand the past and get ready for some future mortality; that's

why all the verbs in stories have ed endings, Keith my good man, even the

ones that sell millions of paperbacks. The only two useful artforms are

religion and stories.

I was pretty drunk that night, as you may have guessed.

What I did tell him was: 'I was thinking of something else, that's all.' The

most important things are the hardest things to say.

We walked further down the tracks- I don't know just how far-and I was

starting to think: Well, okay, I'm going to be able to handle it, it's all over

anyway, just a bunch of leeches, what the fuck; I was still thinking it when

waves of whiteness suddenly began to come over my sight and I fell down.

I must have fallen hard, but landing on the crossties was like plunging

into a warm and puffy feather bed. Someone turned me over. The touch of

hands was faint and unimportant. Their faces were disembodied balloons

looking down at me from miles up.

They looked the way the ref s face must look to a fighter who has been

punched silly and is currently taking a ten-second rest on the canvas. Their

words came in gentle oscillations, fading in and out ' him?'

' be all '

' if you think the sun'

'Gordie, are you '

Then I must have said something that didn't make much sense because

they began to look really worried.

'We better take him back, man,' Teddy said, and then the whiteness came

over everything again.

When it cleared, I seemed to be all right Chris was squatting next to me,

saying: 'Can you hear me, Gordie? You there, man?'

'Yes,' I said, and sat up. A swarm of black dots exploded in front of my

eyes, and then went away. I waited to see if they'd come back, and when

they didn't, I stood

uP.

'You scared the cheesly old shit outta me, Gordie,' he said. 'You want a

drink of water?'

'Yeah.'

He gave me his canteen, half-full of water, and I let three warm gulps roll

down my throat 'Why'd you faint, Gordie?' Vern asked anxiously. 'Made a

bad mistake and looked at your face,' I said. 'Eeee-eee-eeeee!' Teddy

cackled. 'Fuckin' Gordie! You wet!' 'You really okay?' Vern persisted.

'Yeah. Sure. It was bad there for a minute. Thinking about those

suckers.' They nodded soberly. We took five in the shade and then went on

walking, me and Vern on one side of the tracks again, Chris and Teddy on

the other. We figured we must be getting close.

We weren't as close as we thought, and if we'd had the brains to spend

two minutes looking at a roadmap, we would have seen why. We knew that

Ray Brewer's corpse had to be near the Back Harlow Road, which dead-

ends on the bank of the Royal River. Another trestle carries the GS&WM

tracks across the Royal. So this is the way we figured: Once we got close to

the Royal, we'd be getting close to the Back Harlow Road, where Billy and

Charlie had been parked when they saw the boy. And since the Royal was

only ten miles from the Castle River, we figured we had it made in the

shade. But that was ten miles as the crow flies, and the tracks didn't move

on a straight line between the Castle and the Royal. Instead, they made a

very shallow loop to avoid a hilly, crumbling region called The Bluffs.

Anyway, we could have seen that loop quite clearly if we had looked on a

map, and figured out that instead of ten miles, we had about sixteen to walk.

Chris began to suspect the truth when noon had come and gone and the

Royal still wasn't in sight. We stopped while he climbed a high pine tree

and took a look around. He came down and gave us a simple enough report:

it was going to be at least four in the afternoon before we got to the Royal,

and we would only make it by then if we humped right along. 'Ah, shit!'

Teddy cried. 'So what're we gonna do now?'

We looked into each other's tired, sweaty faces. We were hungry and out

of temper. The big adventure had turned into a long slog-dirty and

sometimes scary. We would have been missed back home by now, too, and

if Milo Pressman hadn't already called the cops on us, the engineer of the

train crossing the trestle might have done it. We had been planning to

hitchhike back to Castle Rock, but four o'clock was just three hours from

dark, and nobody gives four kids on a back country road a lift after dark. I

tried to summon up the cool image of my deer, cropping at green morning

grass, but even that seemed dusty and no good, no better than a stuffed

trophy over the mantle in some guy's hunting lodge, the eyes sprayed to

give them that phony lifelike shine. Finally Chris said: 'It's still closer going

ahead. Let's go.'

He turned and started to walk along the tracks in his dusty sneakers, head

down, his shadow only a puddle at his feet. After a minute or so the rest of

us followed him, strung out in Indian file.

In the years between then and the writing of this memoir, I've thought

remarkably little about those two days in September, at least consciously.

The associations the memories bring to the surface are as unpleasant as

week-old river corpses brought to the surface by cannonfire. As a result, I

never really questioned our decision to walk down the tracks. Put another

way, I've wondered sometimes about what we had decided to do but never

about how we did it. But now a much simpler scenario comes to mind. I'm

confident that if the idea had come up it would have been shot down-

walking down the tracks would have seemed neater, bosser, as we said then.

But if the idea had come up and hadn't been shot down in flames, none of

the things which occurred later would have happened. Maybe Chris and

Teddy and Vern would even be alive today. No, they didn't die in the woods

or on the railroad tracks; nobody dies in this story except some

bloodsuckers and Ray Brower, and if you want to be completely fair about

it, he was dead before it even started. But it is true that, of the four of us

who flipped coins to see who would go down to the Florida Market to get

supplies, only the one who actually went is still alive. The Ancient Mariner

at thirty-four, with you, Gentle Reader, in the role of wedding guest (at this

point shouldn't you flip to the jacket photo to see if my eye holdeth you in

its spell?) If you sense a certain flipness on my part, you're right-but

maybe I have cause. At an age when all four of us would be considered too

young and immature to be President, three of us are dead. And if small

events really do echo up larger and larger through time, yes, maybe if we

had done the simple thing and simply hitched into Harlow, they would still

be alive today. We could have hooked a ride all the way up Route 7 to the

Shiloh Church, which stood at the intersection of the highway and the Back

Harlow Road (at least until 1967, when it was levelled by a fire attributed to

a tramp's smouldering cigarette butt). With reasonable luck we could have

been beating the bushes in the area where Billy and Charlie parked with

their skag girlfriends before sundown of the previous day.

But the idea wouldn't have lived. It wouldn't have been shot down with

tightly buttressed arguments and debating society rhetoric, but with grunts

and scowls and farts and raised middle fingers. The verbal part of the

discussion would have been carried forward with such trenchant and

sparkling contributions as 'Fuck no', 'That sucks', and that old reliable

standby, 'Did your mother ever have any kids that lived?'

Unspoken-maybe it was too fundamental to be spoken -was the idea that

this was a big thing. It wasn't screwing around with firecrackers or trying to

look through the knothole in the back of the girls' privy at Harrison State

Park. This was something on a par with getting laid for the first time, or

going into the Army, or buying your first bottle of legal liquor-just bopping

into that state store, if you can dig it, selecting a bottle of good Scotch,

showing the clerk your draft card and drivers' licence, then walking out with

a grin on your face and that brown bag in your hand, member of a club with

just a few more rights and privileges than our old treehouse with the tin

roof.

There's a high ritual to all fundamental events, the rites of passage, the

magic corridor where the change happens. Buying the condoms. Standing

before the minister. Raising your hand and taking the oath. Or, if you

please, walking down the railroad tracks to meet a fellow your own age

halfway, the same as I'd walk halfway up Grand Street to meet Chris if he

was coming over to my house, or the way Teddy would walk halfway down

Gates Street to meet me if I was going to his. It seemed right to do it this

way, because the rite of passage is a magic corridor and so we always

provide an aisle-it's what you walk down when you get married, what they

carry you down when you get buried. Our corridor was those twin rails, and

we walked between them, just bopping along towards whatever this was

supposed to mean. You don't hitchhike your way to a thing like that, maybe.

And maybe we thought it was also right that it should have turned out to

be harder than we had expected. Events surrounding our hike had turned it

into what we had suspected it was all along: serious business.

What we didn't know as we walked around The Bluffs was that Billy

Tessio, Charlie Hogan, Jack Mudgett, Norman 'Fuzzy' Brackowicz, Vince

Desjardins, Chris's older brother Eyeball, and Ace Merrill himself were all

on their way to take a look at the body themselves-in a weird kind of way,

Ray Brower had become famous, and our secret had turned into a regular

roadshow. They were piling into Ace's chopped and channelled '52 Ford

and Vince's pink '54 Studebaker even as we started on the last leg of our

trip. Billy and Charlie had managed to keep their enormous secret for just

about twenty-four hours. Then Charlie spilled it to Ace while they were

shooting pool, and Billy had spilled it to Jack Mudgett while they were

fishing for steelies from the Boom Road bridge. Both Ace and Jack had

sworn solemnly on their mothers' names to keep the secret, and that was

how everybody in their gang knew about it by noon. Guess you could tell

what those assholes thought about their mothers.

They all congregated down at the pool hall, and Fuzzy Brackowicz

advanced a theory (which you have heard before, Gentle Reader) that they

could all become heroes-not to mention instant radio and TV personalities-

by 'discovering' the body. All they had to do, Fuzzy maintained, was to take

two cars with a lot of fishing gear in the trunks. After they found the body,

their story would be a hundred per cent. We was just plannin' to take a few

pickerel out of the Royal River, officer. Heh-heh-heh. Look what we found.

They were burning up the road from Castle Rock to the Back Harlow area

just as we started to finally get close.

Clouds began to build in the sky around two o'clock, but at first none of

us took them seriously. It hadn't rained since the early days of July, so why

should it rain now? But they kept building to the south of us, up and up and

up, thunderheads in great pillars as purple as bruises, and they began to

move slowly our way. I looked at them closely, checking for that membrane

beneath that means it's already raining twenty miles away, or fifty. But there

was no rain yet. The clouds were still just building.

Vern got a blister on his heel and we stopped and rested while he packed

the back of his left sneaker with moss stripped from the bark of an old oak

tree.

'Is it gonna rain, Gordie?' Teddy asked.

'I think so.'

'Pisser!' he said, and sighed. 'The pisser good end to a pisser good day.'

I laughed and he tipped me a wink.

We started to walk again, a little more slowly now out of respect for

Vern's hurt foot.

And in the hour between two and three, the quality of the day's light

began to change, and we knew for sure that rain was coming. It was just as

hot as ever, and even more humid, but we knew. And the birds did. They

seemed to appear from nowhere and swoop across the sky, chattering and

crying shrilly to each other. And the light. From a steady, beating brightness

it seemed to evolve into something filtered, almost pearly. Our shadows,

which had begun to grow long again, also grew fuzzy and ill-defined. The

sun had begun to sail in and out through the thickening decks of clouds, and

the southern sky had gone a copper shade. We watched the thunderheads

lumber closer, fascinated by their size and their mute threat. Every now and

then it seemed that a giant flashbulb had gone off inside one of them,

turning their purplish, bruised colour momentarily to a light grey. I saw a

jagged fork of lightning lick down from the underside of the closest. It was

bright enough to print a blue tattoo on my retinas. It was followed by a

long, shaking blast of thunder.

We did a little bitching about how we were going to get caught out in the

rain, but only because it was the expected thing-of course we were all

looking forward to it. It would be cold and refreshing and leech-free.

At a little past three-thirty, we saw running water through a break in the

trees.

"That's it!' Chris yelled jubilantly. That's the Royal!'

We began to walk faster, taking our second wind. The storm was getting

close now. The air began to stir, and it seemed that the temperature dropped

ten degrees in a space of seconds. I looked down and saw that my shadow

had disappeared entirely.

We were walking in pairs again, each two watching a side of the railroad

embankment.

My mouth was dry, throbbing with a sickish tension. The sun sailed

behind another cloudbank and this time it didn't come back out. For a

moment the bank's edges were embroidered with gold, like a cloud hi an

Old Testament Bible illustration, and then the wine-coloured, dragging

belly of the thunderhead blotted out all traces of the sun. The day became

gloomy-the clouds were rapidly eating up the last of the blue. We could

smell the river so clearly that we might have been horses-or perhaps it was

the smell of rain impending in the air as well. There was an ocean above us,

held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

I kept trying to look into the underbrush, but my eyes were continually

drawn back to that turbulent, racing sky; in its deepening colours you could

read whatever doom you liked: water, fire, wind, hail. The cool breeze

became more insistent, hissing in the firs. A sudden impossible bolt of

lightning flashed down, seemingly from directly overhead, making me cry

out and clap my hands to my eyes. God had taken my picture, a little kid

with his shirt tied around his waist, duckbumps on his bare chest and

cinders on his cheeks. I heard the rending fall of some big tree not sixty

yards away. The crack of thunder which followed made me cringe. I wanted

to be at home reading a good book in a safe place like down in the potato

cellar.

'Jeezis!' Vern screamed in a high, fainting voice. 'Oh my Jeezis Chrise,

lookit

that!'

I looked in the direction Vern was pointing and saw a blue-white fireball

bowling its way up the lefthand rail of the GS&WM tracks, crackling and

hissing for all the world like a scalded cat. It hurried past us as we turned to

watch it go,

dumbfounded, aware for the first time that such things could exist.

Twenty feet beyond us it made a sudden -pop!!-and just disappeared,

leaving a greasy smell of ozone behind.

'What am I doin' here, anyway?' Teddy muttered.

'What a pisser!' Chris exclaimed happily, his face upturned. This is gonna

be a pisser like you wouldn't believer But I was with Teddy. Looking up at

that sky gave me a dismaying sense of vertigo. It was more like looking into

some deeply mysterious marbled gorge.

Another lightning-bolt crashed down, making us duck. This time the

ozone smell was hotter, more urgent. The following clap of thunder came

with no perceptible pause at all.

My ears were still ringing from it when Vern began to screech

triumphantly: 'THERE! THERE HE IS! RIGHT THERE! I SEE HIM!'

I can see Vern right this minute, if I want to-all I have to do is sit back for

a minute and close my eyes. He's standing there on the lefthand rail like an

explorer on the prow of his ship, one hand shielding his eyes from the silver

stroke of lightning that has just come down, the other extended and

pointing.

We ran up beside him and looked. I was thinking to myself: Vern's

imagination just ran away with him, that's all. The suckers, the heat, now

this storm his eyes are dealing wild cards, that's all. But that wasn't what it

was, although there was a split second when I wanted it to be. In that split

second I knew I never wanted to see a corpse, not even a runover

woodchuck.

In the place where we were standing, early spring rains had washed part

of the embankment away, leaving a gravelly, uncertain four-foot drop-off.

The railroad maintenance crews either not yet gotten around to it in their

yellow diesel-operated repair carts, or it had happened so recently it hadn't

yet been reported. At the bottom of this washout was a marshy, mucky

tangle of undergrowth that smelled bad. And sticking out of a wild

clockspring of blackberry brambles was a single pale white hand.

Did any of us breathe? I didn't.

The breeze was now a wind-harsh and jerky, coming at us from no

particular direction, jumping and whirling, slapping at our sweaty skins and

open pores. I hardly noticed. I think part of my mind was waiting for Teddy

to cry out Paratroops over the side!, and I thought if he did that I might just

go crazy. It would have been better to see the whole body, all at once, but

instead there was only that limp outstretched hand, horribly white, the

fingers limply splayed, like the hand of a drowned boy. It told us the truth

of the whole matter. It explained every graveyard in the world. The image

of that hand came back to me every time I heard or read of an atrocity.

Somewhere, attached to that hand, was the rest of Ray Brower.

Lightning flickered and stroked. Thunder ripped in behind each stroke as

if a drag race had started over our heads.

'Sheeeee' Chris said, the sound not quite a cuss word, not quite the

country version of shit as it is pronounced around a slender stem of timothy

grass when the baler breaks down-instead it was a long, tuneless syllable

without meaning; a sigh that had just happened to pass through the vocal

cords.

Vern was licking his lips in a compulsive sort of way, as if he had tasted

some obscure new delicacy, a Howard Johnson's 29th Flavour, Tibetan

Sausage Rolls, Interstellar Escargot, something so weird that it excited and

revolted him at the same time.

Teddy only stood and looked. The wind whipped his greasy, clotted hair

first away from his ears and then back over them. His face was a total

blank. I could tell you I saw something there, and perhaps I did, in

hindsight but not then.

There were black ants trundling back and forth across the hand.

A great whispering noise began to rise in the woods on either side of the

tracks, as if the forest had just noticed we were there and was commenting

on it. The rain had started.

Dime-sized drops fell on my head and arms. They struck the

embankment, turning the fill dark for a moment-and then the colour

changed back again as the greedy dry ground sucked the moisture up.

Those big drops fell for maybe five seconds and then they stopped. I

looked at Chris and he blinked back at me.

Then the storm came all at once, as if a shower chain had been pulled in

the sky. The whispering sound changed to loud contention. It was as if we

were being rebuked for our discovery, and it was frightening. Nobody tells

you about the pathetic fallacy until you're in college and even then I

noticed that nobody but the total dorks completely believed it was a fallacy.

Chris jumped over the side of the washout, his hair already soaked and

clinging to his head. I followed. Vern and Teddy came close behind, but

Chris and I were first to reach the body of Ray Brower. He was face down.

Chris looked into my eyes, his face set and stern-an adult's face. I nodded

slightly, as if he had spoken aloud. I think he was down here and relatively

intact instead of up there between the rails and completely mangled because

be was trying to get out of the way when the train hit him, knocking him

head over heels. He had landed with his head pointed towards the tracks,

arms over his head like a diver about to execute. He had landed in this

boggy cup of land that was becoming a small swamp. His hair was a dark

reddish colour. The moisture in the air had made it curl slightly at the ends.

There was blood in it, but not a great deal, not a gross-out amount. The ants

were grosser. He was wearing a solid colour dark green tee-shirt and

bluejeans. His feet were bare, and a few feet behind him, caught in the

blackberry brambles, I saw a pair of filthy low-topped Keds. For a moment

I was puzzled-why was he here and his tennies there Then I realized, and

the realization was like a dirty punch below the belt. My wife, my kids, my

friends-they all think that having an imagination like mine must be quite

nice; aside from making all this dough, I can have a little mind-movie

whenever things get dull. Mostly they're right. But every now and then it

turns around and bites the shit out of you with these long teeth, teeth that

have been filed to points like the teeth of a cannibal. You see things you'd

just as soon not see, things that keep you awake until first light. I saw one

of those things now, saw it with absolute clarity and certainty. He had been

knocked spang out of his Keds. The train had knocked him out of his Keds

just as it had knocked the life out of his body. That finally rammed it all the

way home for me. The kid was dead. The kid wasn't sick, the kid wasn't

sleeping. The kid wasn't going to get up in the morning anymore or get the

runs from eating too many apples or catch poison ivy or wear out the eraser

on the end of his Ticonderoga No. 2 during a hard math test. The kid was

dead; stone dead. The kid was never going to go out bottling with his

friends in the spring, gunnysack over his shoulder to pick up the returnables

the retreating snow uncovered. The kid wasn't going to wake up at two

o'clock a. m. on the morning of 1 November this year, run to the bathroom,

and vomit up a big glurt of cheap Halloween candy. The kid wasn't going to

pull a single girl's braid in home room. The kid wasn't going to give a

bloody nose, or get one. The kid was can't, don't, won't, never, shouldn't,

wouldn't, couldn't. He was the side of the

battery where the terminal says NEG. The fuse you have to put a penny

in. The wastebasket by the teacher's desk, which always smells of wood-

shavings from the sharpener and dead orange-peels from lunch. The

haunted house outside of town where the windows are crashed out, the NO

TRESPASSING signs whipped away across the fields, the attic full of bats,

the cellar full of worms. The kid was dead, mister, ma'am, young sir, little

miss. I could go on all day and never get it right about the distance between

his bare feet on the ground and his dirty Keds hanging in the bushes. It was

thirty-plus inches, it was a googol of light-years. The kid was disconnected

from his Keds beyond all hope of reconciliation. He was dead.

We turned him face up into the pouring rain, the lightning, the steady

crack of thunder. There were ants and bugs all over his face and neck. They

ran briskly in and out of the round collar of his tee-shirt. His eyes were

open, but terrifyingly out of sync-one was rolled back so far that we could

see only a tiny arc of pupil; the other stared straight up into the storm. There

was a dried froth of blood above his mouth and on his chin-from a bloody

nose, I thought-and the right side of his face was lacerated and darkly

bruised. Still, I thought, he didn't really look bad. I had once walked into a

door my brother Dennis was shoving open, came off with bruises even

worse than this kid's, plus the bloody nose, and still had two helpings of

everything for supper after it happened. Teddy and Vern stood behind us

and if there had been any sight at all left in that one upward-staring eye, I

suppose we would have looked to Ray Brower like pallbearers in a horror

movie.

A beetle came out of his mouth, trekked across his fuzzless cheek,

stepped onto a nettle, and was gone.

'Djoo see that?' Teddy asked in a high, strange, fainting voice. 'I bet he's

fuckin' fulla bugs! I bet his brains're-

'Shut up, Teddy,' Chris said, and Teddy did, looking relieved. Lightning

forked blue across the sky, making the boy's single eye light up. You could

almost believe he was glad to be found, and found by boys his own age. His

torso had swelled up and there was a faint gassy odour about him, like the

smell of old farts. I turned away, sure I was going to be sick, but my

stomach was dry, hard, steady. I suddenly rammed two fingers down my

throat, trying to make myself heave, needing to do it, as if I could sick it up

and get rid of it. But my stomach only hitched a little and then was steady

again.

The roaring downpour and the accompanying thunder had completely

covered the sound of cars approaching along the Back Harlow Road, which

lay bare yards beyond this boggy tangle. It likewise covered the crackle-

crunch of the underbrush as they blundered through it from the dead end

where they had parked.

And the first we knew of them was Ace Merrill's voice raised above the

tumult of the storm, saying: 'Well what the fuck do you know about this?'

We all jumped like we had been goosed and Vern cried out -he admitted

later that he thought, for just a second, that the voice had come from the

dead boy.

On the far side of the boggy patch, where the woods took up again,

masking the butt end of the road, Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers stood

together, half-obscured by a pouring grey curtain of rain. They were both

wearing red nylon high school jackets, the kind you can buy in the office if

you're a regular student, the same kind they give away free to varsity sports

players. Their da haircuts had been plastered back against their skulls and a

mixture of rainwater and Vitalis ran down their cheeks like ersatz tears.

'Sumbitch!' Eyeball said. That's my little brother!'

Chris was staring at Eyeball with his mouth open. His shirt, wet, limp

and dark, was still tied around his skinny middle. His pack, stained a darker

green by the rain, was hanging against his naked shoulderblades.

'You get away, Rich,' he said in a trembling voice. 'We found him. We got

dibs.'

'Fuck your dibs. We're gonna report 'im.'

'No you're not,' I said. I was suddenly furious with them, turning up this

way at the last minute. If we'd thought about it, we'd have known something

just like this was going to happen but this was one time, somehow, that the

older, bigger kids weren't going to steal it-to take something they wanted as

if by divine right, as if their easy way was the right way, the only way. They

had come in cars -I think that was what made me angriest. They had come

in cars. 'There's four of us, Eyeball. You just try.'

'Oh, we'll try, don't worry,' Eyeball said, and the trees shook behind him

and Ace, Charlie Hogan and Vern's brother Billy stepped through them,

cursing and wiping water out of their eyes. I felt a lead ball drop into my

belly. It grew bigger as Jack Mudgett and Fuzzy Brackowicz stepped out

behind Charlie and Billy. 'Here we all are,' Ace said, grinning. 'So you just -

'VERN!!' Billy Tessio cried in a terrible, accusing, my-justice-cometh-

and-that-right-early voice. He made a pair of dripping fists. 'You little

sonofawhore! You was under the porch! Cock-knocker!' Vern flinched.

Charlie Hogan waxed positively lyrical: 'You little keyhole-peeping cunt-

licking bungwipe! I ought to beat the living shit out of you!'

'Yeah? Well, try it!' Teddy brayed suddenly. His eyes were crazily alight

behind his rainspotted glasses. 'Come on, fightcha for 'im! Come on! Come

on, big men!' Billy and Charlie didn't need a second invitation. They started

forward together and Vern flinched again-no doubt visualizing the ghosts of

Beatings Past and Beatings Yet To Come. He flinched but hung tough. He

was with his friends, and we had been through a lot, and we hadn't got here

in a couple of cars.

But Ace held Billy and Charlie back, simply by touching each of them on

the shoulder. 'Now listen, you guys,' Ace said. He spoke patiently, just as if

we weren't all standing in a roaring rainstorm. 'There's more of us than there

are of you. We're bigger. We'll give you one chance to just blow away. I

don't give a fuck where. Just make like a tree and leave.' Chris's brother

giggled and Fuzzy clapped Ace on the back in appreciation of his great wit.

The Sid Caesar of the set.

'Cause we're takin' him.' Ace smiled gently, and you could imagine him

smiling that same gentle smile just before breaking his cue over the head of

some uneducated punk who had made the terrible mistake of lipping off

while Ace was lining up a shot. 'If you go, we'll take him. If you stay, well

beat the piss outta you and still take him. Besides,' he added, trying to gild

the thuggery with a little righteousness, 'Charlie and Billy found him, so it's

their dibs anyway.'

'They was chicken!' Teddy shot back. 'Vern told us about it! They was

fuckin' chicken right outta their fuckin' minds!' He screwed his face up into

a terrified, snivelling parody of Charlie Hogan.' "I wish we never boosted

that car! I wish we never went on no Back Harlow Road to whack off a

piece! Oh Billee, what are we gonna do? Oh Billee, I think I just made a

pile in my Fruit of the Looms! Oh Billee -"'

That's it,' Charlie said, starting forward again. His face was knotted with

rage and sullen embarrassment. 'Kid, whatever your name is, get ready to

reach down your fuckin' throat the next time you need to pick your nose.'

I looked wildly down at Ray Brower. He stared calmly up into the rain

with his one eye, below us but above it all. The thunder was still booming

steadily, but the rain had begun to slack off.

'What do you say, Gordie?' Ace asked. He was holding Charlie lightly by

the arm, the way an accomplished trainer would restrain a vicious dog. 'You

must have at least some of your brother's sense. Tell these guys to back off.

I'll let Charlie beat up the four eyes el punko a little bit and then we all go

about our business. What do you say?'

He was wrong to mention Denny. I had wanted to reason with him, to

point out what Ace knew perfectly well, that we had every right to take

Billy and Charlie's dibs since Vern had heard them giving said dibs away. I

wanted to tell him how Vern and I had almost gotten run down by a freight

train on the trestle which spans the Castle River. About Milo Pressman and

his fearless-if stupid-sidekick, Chopper the Wonder-Dog. About the

bloodsuckers, too. I guess all I really wanted to tell him was come on, Ace,

fair is fair.

You know that. But he had to bring Denny into it, and what I heard

coming out of my mouth instead of sweet reason was my own death

warrant: 'Suck my fat one, you cheap dime-store hood.'

Ace's mouth formed a perfect O of surprise-the expression was so

unexpectedly prissy that under other circumstances it would have been a

laff riot, so to speak. All of the others-on both sides of the bog-stared at me.

dumbfounded.

Then Teddy screamed gleefully: "That's telling 'im, Gordie! Oh boy! Too

cool!'

I stood numbly, unable to believe it. It was like some crazed understudy

had shot onstage at the critical moment and declaimed lines that weren't

even in the play. Telling a guy to suck was as bad as you could get without

resorting to his mother. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Chris had

unshouldered his knapsack and was digging into it frantically, but I didn't

get it-not then, anyway.

'Okay,' Ace said softly. 'Let's take 'em. Don't hurt nobody but the

Lachance kid. I'm gonna break both his fuckin' arms.'

I went dead cold. I didn't piss myself the way I had on the railroad trestle,

but it must have been because I had nothing inside to let out. He meant it,

you see; the years between then and now have changed my mind about a lot

of things, but not about that. When Ace said he was going to break both of

my arms, he absolutely meant it.

They started to walk towards us through the slackening rain. Jackie

Mudgett took a DeMano switchknife out of his pocket and hit the chrome.

Six inches of steel flicked out, dove-grey in the afternoon half-light Vern

and Teddy dropped suddenly into fighting crouches on either side of me.

Teddy did so eagerly, Vern with a desperate, cornered grimace on his face.

The big kids advanced in a line, their feet splashing through the bog,

which was now one big sludgy puddle because of the storm. The body of

Ray Brower lay at our feet like a waterlogged barrel. I got ready to fight

and that was when Chris fired the pistol he had hawked out of his old man's

dresser. KA-BLAM!

God, what a wonderful sound that was! Charlie Hogar jumped right up

into the air. Ace Merrill, who had been staring straight at me, now jerked

around and looked at Chris. His mouth made that O again. Eyeball looked

absolutely astounded.

'Hey, Chris, that's Daddy's,' he said. 'You're gonna get the tar whaled out

you -'

"That's nothing to what you'll get,' Chris said. His face was horribly pale,

and all the life in him seemed to have been sucked upward, into his eyes.

They blazed out of his face.

'Gordie was right, you're nothing but a bunch of cheap hoods. Vern and

Billy didn't want their fuckin' dibs and you all know it. We wouldn't have

walked way to fuck out here if they said they did. They just went someplace

and puked the story up and let Ace Merrill do their thinkin' for them.' His

voice rose to a scream. 'But you ain't gonna get him, do you hear me?

'Now listen,' Ace said. 'You better put that down before you take your

foot off with it. You ain't got the sack to shoot a woodchuck.' He began to

walk forward again, smiling his gentle smile as he came. 'You're just a

sawed-off pint-sized pissy-assed little runt and I'm gonna make you eat that

fuckin' gun.'

'Ace, if you don't stand still I'm going to shoot you. I swear to God.'

'You'll go to jayyy-ail' Ace crooned, not even hesitating. He was still

smiling. The others watched him with horrified fascination much the same

way as Teddy and Vern and I were looking at Chris. Ace Merrill was the

hardest case for miles around and I didn't think Chris could bluff him down.

And what did that leave? Ace didn't think a twelve-year-old punk would

actually shoot him. I thought he was wrong; I thought Chris would shoot

Ace before he let Ace take his father's pistol away from him. In those few

seconds I was sure there was going to be bad trouble, the worst I'd ever

known. Killing trouble, maybe. And all of it over who got dibs on a dead

body.

Chris said softly, with great regret: 'Where do you want it, Ace? Arm or

leg? I can't pick. You pick for me.' And Ace stopped.

His face sagged, and I saw sudden terror on it. It was Chris's tone rather

than his actual words, I think; the real regret that things were going to go

from bad to worse. If it was a bluff, it's still the best I've ever seen. The

other big kids were totally convinced; their faces were squinched up as if

someone had just touched a match to a cherry bomb with a short fuse.

Ace slowly got control of himself. The muscles in his face tightened

again, his lips pressed together, and he looked at Chris the way you'd look

at a man who has made a serious business proposition-to merge with your

company, or handle your line of credit, or shoot your balls off. It was a

waiting, almost curious expression, one that made you know that the terror

was either gone or tightly lidded. Ace had recomputed the odds on not

getting shot and had decided that they weren't as much in his favour as he

had thought. But he was still dangerous-maybe more than before. Since

then I've thought it was the rawest piece of brinkmanship I've ever seen.

Neither of them was bluffing; they both meant business.

'All right,' Ace said softly, speaking to Chris. 'But I know how you're

going to come out of this, motherfuck.'

'No you don't,' Chris said.

'You little prick!' Eyeball said loudly. 'You're gonna wind up in traction

for

this!'

'Bite my bag,' Chris told him.

With an inarticulate sound of rage Eyeball started forward and Chris put

a bullet into the water about ten feet in front of him. It kicked up a splash.

Eyeball jumped back, cursing.

'Okay, now what?' Ace asked.

'Now you guys get into your cars and bomb on back to Castle Rock.

After that I don't care. But you ain't getting him.' He touched Ray Brower

lightly, almost reverently, with the toe of one sopping sneaker. 'You dig

me?'

'But we'll get you,' Ace said. He was starting to smile again. 'Don't you

know

that?'

'We'll get you hard,' Ace said, smiling. 'We'll hurt you. I can't believe you

don't know that. We'll put you all in the fuckin' hospital with fuckin'

ruptures. Sincerely.'

'Oh, why don't you go home and fuck your mother some more? I hear she

loves the way you do it'

Ace's smile froze. 'I'll kill you for that. Nobody ranks my mother.'

'I heard your mother fucks for bucks,' Chris informed him, and as Ace

began to pale, as his complexion began to approach Chris's own ghastly

whiteness, he added: 'In fact, I heard she throws blowjobs for jukebox

nickels. I heard -'

Then the storm came back, viciously, all at once. Only this time it was

hail instead of rain. Instead of whispering or talking, the woods now

seemed alive with hokey B-movie jungle drums-it was the sound of big ice

hailstones bonking off treetrunks. Stinging pebbles began to hit my

shoulders-it felt as if some sentient, malevolent force was throwing them.

Worse than that, they began to strike Ray Brower's upturned face with an

awful splatting sound that reminded us of him again, of his terrible and

unending patience.

Vern caved in first, with a wailing scream. He fled up the embankment in

huge, gangling strides. Teddy held out a minute longer, then ran after Vern,

his hands held up over his head. On their side, Vince Desjardins floundered

back under some nearby trees and Fuzzy Brackowicz joined him. But the

others stood pat, and Ace began to grin again.

'Stick with me, Gordie," Chris said in a low, shaky voice. 'Stick with me,

man.'

'I'm right here.'

'Go on, now,' Chris said to Ace, and he was able, by some magic, to get

the shakiness out of his voice. He sounded as if he was instructing a stupid

infant.

'Well get you,' Ace said. 'We're not going to forget it, if that's what you're

thinking. This is big time, baby.'

"That's fine. You just go on and do your getting another day.'

'Well fuckin' ambush you, Chambers. We'll -'

'Get out!' Chris screamed, and levelled the gun. Ace stepped back.

He looked at Chris a moment longer, nodded, then turned around. 'Come

on,' he said to the others. He looked back over his shoulder at Chris and me

once more. 'Be seeing you.'

They went back into the screen of trees between the bog and the road.

Chris and I stood perfectly still in spite of the hail that was welting us,

reddening our skins,

and piling up all around us like summer snow. We stood and listened and

above the crazy calypso sound of the hail hitting the treetrunks we heard

two cars start up.

'Stay right here,' Chris told me, and he started across the bog.

'Chris!' I said, panicky.

'I got to. Stay here.'

It seemed he was gone a very long time. I became convinced that either

Ace or Eyeball had lurked behind and grabbed him. I stood my ground with

nobody but Ray Brower for company and waited for somebody-anybody -to

come back. After a while, Chris did.

'We did it,' he said. 'They're gone.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah. Both cars.' He held his hands up over his head, locked together

with the gun between them, and shook the double fist in a wry

championship gesture. Then he dropped them and smiled at me. I think it

was the saddest, scaredest smile I ever saw.' "Suck my fat one"-whoever

told you you had a fat one, Lachance?'

'Biggest one in four counties,' I said. I was shaking all over.

We looked at each other warmly for a second, and then, maybe

embarrassed by what we were seeing, looked down together. A nasty thrill

of fear shot through me, and the sudden splash splash as Chris shifted his

feet let me know that he had seen, too. Ray Brewer's eyes had gone wide

and white, starey and pupilless, like the eyes that look out at you from

Grecian statuary. It only took a second to understand what had happened,

but understanding didn't lessen the horror. His eyes had filled up with round

white hailstones.

Now they were melting and the water ran down his cheeks as if he were

weeping for his own grotesque position- a tatty prize to be fought over by

two bunches of stupid hick kids. His clothes were also white with hail. He

seemed to be lying in his own shroud.

'Oh, Gordie, hey,' Chris said shakily. 'Say-hey, man. What a creepshow

for

him.'

'I don't think he knows -'

'Maybe that was his ghost we heard. Maybe he knew this was gonna

happen. What a fuckin' creepshow, I'm sincere.'

Branches crackled behind us. I whirled, sure they had flanked us, but

Chris went back to contemplating the body after one short, almost casual

glance. It was Vern and Teddy, their jeans soaked black and plastered to

their legs, both of them grinning like dogs that have been sucking eggs.

'What are we gonna do, man?' Chris asked, and I felt a weird chill steal

through me.

Maybe he was talking to me, maybe he was but he was still looking

down at the body.

'We're gonna take him back, ain't we?' Teddy asked, puzzled. 'We're

gonna be heroes. Ain't that right?' He looked from Chris to me and back to

Chris again.

Chris looked up as if startled out of a dream. His lip curled. He took big

steps towards Teddy, planted both hands on Teddy's chest, and pushed him

roughly backwards. Teddy stumbled, pinwheeled his arms for balance, then

sat down with a soggy splash. He blinked up at Chris like a surprised

muskrat. Vern was looking warily at Chris, as if he feared madness. Perhaps

that wasn't far from the mark.

'You keep your trap shut,' Chris said to Teddy. 'Paratroops over the side

my ass. You lousy rubber chicken.'

'It was the hail!' Teddy cried out, angry and ashamed. 'It wasn't those

guys, Chris! I'm ascared of storms! I can't help it! I would have taken all of

'em on at once, I swear on my mother's name! But I'm ascared of storms!

Shit! I can't help it!' He began to cry again, sitting there in the water.

'What about you?' Chris asked, turning to Vern. 'Are you ascared of

storms

too?'

Vern shook his head vacuously, still astounded by Chris's rage. 'Hey,

man, I thought we was all runnin'.'

'You must be a mind-reader then, because you ran first'

Vem swallowed twice and said nothing.

Chris stared at him, his eyes sullen and wild. Then he turned to me.

'Going to build him a litter, Gordie.'

'If you say so, Chris.'

'Sure! Like in Scouts.' His voice had begun to climb into strange, reedy

levels. 'Just like in the fuckin' Scouts. A litter -poles and shuts. Like in the

handbook. Right, Gordie?'

'Yeah. If you want But what if those guys -'

'Fuck those guys!' he screamed. 'You're all a bunch of chickens! Fuck off,

creeps!'

'Chris, they could call the sheriff. To get back at us.'

"He's ours and we're gonna take him OUT!'

Those guys would say anything to get us in dutch,' I told him. My words

sounded thin, stupid, sick with the flu. 'Say anything and then lie each other

up. You know how people can get other people in trouble telling lies, man.

Like with the milk-mo-'

'I DONT CARE!" he screamed, and lunged at me with his fists up. But

one of his feet struck Ray Brower's ribcage with a soggy thump, making the

body rock. He tripped and fell full-length and I waited for him to get up and

maybe punch me in the mouth but instead he lay where he had fallen, head

pointing towards the embankment, arms stretched out over his head like a

diver about to execute, in the exact posture Ray Brower had been in when

we found him. I looked wildly at Chris's feet to make sure his sneakers were

still on. Then he began to cry and scream, his body bucking in the muddy-

water, splashing it around, fists drumming up and down in it head twisting

from side to side. Teddy and Vem were staring at him, agog, because

nobody had ever seen Chris Chambers cry. After a moment or two I walked

back to the embankment, climbed it, and sat down on one of the rails.

Teddy and Vern followed me. And we sat there in the rain, not talking,

looking like those three Monkeys of Virtue they sell in dimestores and those

sleazy gift-shops that always look like they are tottering on the edge of

bankruptcy.

It was twenty minutes before Chris climbed the embankment to sit down

beside us. The clouds had begun to break. Spears of sun came down

through the rips. The bushes seemed to have gone three shades darker green

in the last forty-five minutes.

He was mud ail the way up one side and down the other. His hair was

standing up in muddy spikes.

The only clean parts of him were the whitewashed circles around his

eyes.

'You're right, Gordie,' he said. 'Nobody gets last dibs. Goocher all around,

huh?'

I nodded. Five minutes passed. No one said anything. And I happened to

have a thought just in case they did call Bannerman. I went back down the

embankment and over to where Chris had been standing. I got down on my

knees and began to comb carefully through the water and marshgrass with

my fingers.

'What you doing?' Teddy asked, joining me.

'It's to your left, I think,' Chris said, and pointed.

I looked there and after a minute or two I found both shell casings. They

winked in the fresh sunlight. I gave them to Chris. He nodded and stuffed

them into a pocket of his jeans.

'Now we go,' Chris said.

'Hey, come on!' Teddy yelled, in real agony. 'I wanna take 'im!'

'Listen, dummy,' Chris said, 'if we take him back we could all wind up in

the reformatory. It's like Gordie says. Those guys could make up any story

they wanted to. What if they said we killed him, huh? How would you like

that?'

'I don't give a damn,' Teddy said sulkily. Then he looked at us with

absurd hope. 'Besides, we might only get a couple of months or so. As

excessories. I mean, we're only twelve fuckin' years old, they ain't gonna

put us in Shawshank.'

Chris said softly: 'You can't get in the army if you got a record, Teddy.'

I was pretty sure that was nothing but a bald-faced lie -but somehow this

didn't seem the time to say so. Teddy just looked at Chris for a long time,

his mouth trembling. Finally he managed to squeak out: 'No shit?'

'Ask Gordie.'

He looked at me hopefully.

'He's right,' I said, feeling like a great big turd. 'He's right, Teddy. First

thing they do when you volunteer is to check your name through R&I.'

'Holy God!'

'We're gonna shag ass back to the trestle,' Chris said. 'Then well get off

the tracks and come into Castle Rock from the other direction. If people ask

where we were, we'll say we went campin' up on Brickyard Hill and got

lost.'

'Milo Pressman knows better,' I said. 'That creep at the Florida Market

does,

too.'

'Well, we'll say Milo scared us and that's when we decided to go up on

the Brickyard.' I nodded. That might work. If Vern and Teddy could

remember to stick to it 'What about if our folks get together?' Vern asked.

'You worry about it if you want,' Chris said. 'My dad'll still be juiced up.'

'Come on, then,' Vern said, eyeing the screen of trees between us and the

Back Harlow Road. He looked like he expected Bannerman, along with a

brace of bloodhounds, to come crashing through at any moment 'Let's get

while the gettin's good.' We were all on our feet now, ready to go. The birds

were singing like crazy, pleased with the rain and the shine and the worms

and just about everything in the world, I guess. We all turned around, as if

pulled on strings, and looked back at Ray Brower. He was lying there, alone

again. His arms had flopped out when we turned him over and now he was

sort of spreadeagled, as if to welcome the sunshine. For a moment it seemed

all right a more natural deathscene than any ever constructed for a viewing-

room audience by a mortician. Then you saw the bruise, the caked blood on

the chin and under the nose, and the way the corpse was beginning to

bloat. You saw that the bluebottles had come out with the sun and that they

were circling the body, buzzing indolently. You remembered that gassy

smell, sickish but dry, like farts in a closed room. He was a boy our age, he

was dead, and I rejected the idea that anything about it could be natural; I

pushed it away with horror.

'Okay,' Chris said, and he meant to be brisk but his voice came out of his

throat like a handful of dry bristles from an old whiskbroom. 'Double time.'

We started to almost-trot back the way we had come. We didn't talk. I

don't know about the others, but I was too busy thinking to talk. There were

things that bothered me about the body of Ray Brower-they bothered me

then and they bother me now. A bad bruise on the side of his face, a scalp

laceration, a bloody nose. No more-at least, no more visible. People walk

away from bar-fights in worse condition and go right on drinking. Yet the

train must have hit him; why else would his sneakers be off his feet that

way? And how come the engineer hadn't seen him? Could it be that the

train had hit him hard enough to toss him but not to kill him? I thought that,

under just the right combination of circumstances, that could have

happened. Had the train hit him a hefty, teeth-rattling sideswipe as he tried

to get out of the way? Hit him and knocked him in a flying, backwards

somersault over that eaved-in banking? Had he perhaps lain awake and

trembling in the dark for hours, not just lost now but disorientated as well,

cut off from the world? Maybe he had died of fear. A bird with crushed

tailfeathers once died in my cupped hands in just that way. Its body

trembled and vibrated lightly, its beak opened and closed, its dark, bright

eyes stared up at me. Then the vibration quit, the beak froze half-open, and

the black eyes became lacklustre and uncaring. It could have been that way

with Ray Brower. He could have died because he was simply too frightened

to go on living.

But there was another thing, and that bothered me most of all, I think. He

had started off to go berrying. I seemed to remember the news reports

saying he'd been carrying a tin pail. When we got back I went to the library

and looked it up in the newspapers just to be sure, and I was right He'd been

berrying, and he'd had a pail. But we hadn't found it We found him, and we

found his sneakers. He must have thrown it away somewhere between

Chamberlain and the boggy patch of ground in Harlow where he died. He

perhaps clutched it even tighter at first, as though it linked him to home and

safety. But as his fear grew, and with it that sense of being utterly alone,

with no chance of rescue except for whatever he could do by himself, as the

real cold terror set it, he maybe threw it away into the woods on one side of

the tracks or the other, hardily even noticing it was gone. I've thought of

going back and looking for it-how does that strike you for morbid? I've

thought of driving to the end of the Back Harlow Road in my almost new

Ford van and getting out of it some bright summer morning, all by myself,

my wife and children far off in another world where, if you turn a switch,

lights come on in the dark. I've thought about how it would be. Pulling my

pack out of the back and resting it on the customized van's rear bumper

while I carefully remove my shirt and tie it around my waist. Rubbing my

chest and shoulders with Muskol insect repellent and then crashing through

the woods to where that boggy place was, the place where we found him.

Would the grass grow up yellow there, in the shape of his body? Of course

not, there would be no sign, but still you wonder, and you realize what a

thin film there is between your rational man costume-the writer with leather

elbow-patches on his corduroy jacket -and the capering, Gorgon myths of

childhood. Then climbing the embankment, now overgrown with weeds,

and walking slowly beside the rusted tracks and rotted ties towards

Chamberlain. Stupid fantasy. An expedition looking for a fourteen-year-old

blueberry

pail, which was probably cast deep into the woods or ploughed under by

a bulldozer readying a half-acre plot for a tract house or so deeply

overgrown by weeds and brambles it had become invisible. But I feel sure it

is still there, somewhere along the old discontinued GS&WM line, and at

times the urge to go and look is almost a frenzy. It usually comes early in

the morning, when my wife is showering and the kids are watching Batman

and Scooby-Doo on channel 38 out of Boston, and I am feeling the most

like the pre-adolescent Gordon Lachance that once strode the earth, walking

and talking and occasionally crawling on his belly like a reptile. That boy

was me, I think. And the thought which follows, chilling me like a dash of

cold water, is: Which boy do you mean?

Sipping a cup of tea, looking at sun slanting through the kitchen

windows, hearing the TV from one end of the house and the shower from

the other, feeling the pulse behind my eyes that means I got through one

beer too many the night before, I feel sure I could find it. I would see clear

metal winking through rust, the bright summer sun reflecting it back to my

eyes. I would go down the side of the embankment, push aside the grasses

that had grown up and twined toughly around its handle, and then I would

what? Why, simply pull it out of time. I would turn it over and over in my

hands, wondering at the feel of it, marvelling at the knowledge that the last

person to touch it had been long years in his grave. Suppose there was a

note in it? Help me, I'm lost. Of course there wouldn't be -boys don't go out

to pick blueberries with paper and pencil-but just suppose. I imagine the

awe I'd feel would be as dark as an eclipse. Still, it's mostly just the idea of

holding that pail in my two hands, I guess-as much a symbol of my living

as his dying, proof that I really do know which boy it was-which boy of the

five of us. Holding it. Reading every year in its cake of rust and the fading

of its bright shine. Feeling it, trying to understand the suns that shone on it

the rains that fell on it, and the snows that covered it And to wonder where I

was when each thing happened to it in its lonely place, where I was, what I

was doing, who I was loving, how I was getting along, where I was. I'd hold

it, read it, feel it and look at my own face in whatever reflection might be

left. Can you dig it?

We got back to Castle Rock a little past five o'clock on Sunday morning,

the day before Labour Day. We had walked all night Nobody complained,

although we all had blisters and were all ravenously hungry. My head was

throbbing with a killer headache, and my legs felt twisted and burning with

fatigue. Twice we had to scramble down the embankment to get out of the

way of freights. One of them was going our way, but moving far too fast to

hop. It was seeping daylight when we got to the trestle spanning the Castle

again. Chris looked at it, looked at the river, looked back at us.

'Fuck it I'm walkin' across. If I get hit by a train I won't have to watch out

for fuckin' Ace Merrill'

We all walked across it-plodded might be the better verb. No train came.

When we got to the dump we climbed the fence (no Milo and no Chopper,

not this early, and not on a Sunday morning) and went directly to the pump.

Vern primed it and we all took turns sticking our heads under the icy flow,

slapping the water over

our bodies, drinking until we could hold no more. Then we had to put our

shirts on again because the morning seemed chilly. We walked-limped -

back into town and stood for a moment on the sidewalk in front of the

vacant lot We looked at our treehouse so we wouldn't have to look at each

other.

'Well,' Teddy said at last, 'seeya in school on Wednesday. I think I'm

gonna sleep until then.'

'Me too,' Vern said. I'm too pooped to pop.'

Chris whistled tunelessly through his teeth and said nothing.

'Hey, man,' Teddy said awkwardly. 'No hard feelin's, okay?'

'No,' Chris said, and suddenly his sombre, tired face broke into a sweet

and sunny grin.

'We did it, didn't we? We did the bastard.'

'Yeah,' Vern said. 'Your fuckin' A. Now Billy's gonna do me: 'So what?'

Chris said. 'Richie's gonna tool up on me and Ace is probably gonna tool up

on Gordie and somebody else'll tool up on Teddy. But we did it'

'That's right,' Vern said. But he still sounded unhappy.

Chris looked at me. 'We did it, didn't we?' he asked softly. It was worth it,

wasn't it?'

'Sure it was,' I said.

'Fuck this,' Teddy said in his dry I'm-losing-interest way. 'You guys sound

like fuckin' Meet the Press. Gimme some skin, man. I'm gonna toot home

and see if Mom's got me on the Ten Most Wanted list.'

We all laughed, Teddy gave us his surprised Oh-Lord-what-now look,

and we gave him skin. Then he and Vern started off in their direction and I

should have gone in mine but I hesitated for a second.

'Walk with you,' Chris offered.

'Sure, okay.'

We walked a block or so without talking. Castle Rock was awesomely

quiet in the day's first light, and I felt an almost holy tiredness-is-slipping-

away sort of feeling. We were awake and the whole world was asleep and I

almost expected to turn the corner and see my deer standing at the far end

of Carbine Street, where the GS&WM tracks pass through the mill's loading

yard.

Finally Chris spoke. 'They'll tell,' he said.

'You bet they will. But not today or tomorrow, if that's what you're

worried about. It'll be a long time before they tell, I think. Years, maybe.'

He looked at me, surprised.

'They're scared, Chris. Teddy especially, that they won't take him in the

army. But Vern's scared, too. They'll lose some sleep over it, and there's

gonna be times this fall when it's right on the tips of their tongues to tell

somebody, but I don't think they will. And then you know what? It sounds

fucking crazy, but I think they'll almost forget it ever happened.'

He was nodding slowly. 'I didn't think of it just like that. You see through

people, Gordie.'

'Man, I wish I did.'

'You do, though.'

We walked another block in silence.

'I'm never gonna get out of this town,' Chris said, and sighed. 'When you

come back from college on summer vacation, you'll be able to look me and

Vern and Teddy up down at Sukey's after the seven-to-three shift's over. If

you want to. Except you'll probably never want to.' He laughed a creepy

laugh.

'Quit jerking yourself off,' I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt- I

was thinking about being out there in the woods, about Chris saying: And

maybe I took it to old lady Simons and told her, and maybe I got a three-

day vacation anyway, because the money never showed up and maybe the

next week old lady Simons had this brand-new skirt on when she came to

school The look. The look in his eyes.

'No jerk-off, daddy-O,' Chris said.

I rubbed my first finger against my thumb. 'This is the world's smallest

violin playing "My Heart Pumps Purple Piss for You".'

'He was ours,' Chris said, his eyes dark in the morning light.

We had reached the corner of my street and we stopped there. It was

quarter past six.

Back towards town we could see the Sunday Telegram truck pulling up in

front of Teddy's uncle's stationery shop. A man in bluejeans and a tee-shirt

threw off a bundle of papers. They bounced upside down on the sidewalk,

showing the colour funnies (always Dick Tracey and Blondie on the first

page). Then the truck drove on, its driver intent on delivering the outside

world to the rest of the whistlestops up the line-Otisfield, Norway-South

Paris, Waterford, Stoneham. I wanted to say something more to Chris and

didn't know how to.

'Gimme some skin, man,' he said, sounding tired.

'Chris-'

'Skin.'

I gave him some skin. 'I'll see you.'

He grinned-that same sweet, sunny grin. 'Not if I see you first, fuckface.'

He walked off, still laughing, moving easily and gracefully, as though he

didn't hurt like me and have blisters like me and like he wasn't lumped and

bumped with mosquito and chigger and blackfly bites like me. As if he

didn't have a care in the world, as if he was going to some real boss place

instead of just home to a three-room house (shack would have been closer

to the truth) with no indoor plumbing and broken windows covered with

plastic and a brother who was probably laying for him in the front yard.

Even if I'd known the right thing to say, I probably couldn't have said it.

Speech destroys the functions of love, I think-that's a hell of a thing for a

writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer

you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is

the harm. Love isn't what these asshole poets like McKuen want you to

think it is. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no

combination of words, can close those lovebites. It's the other way around,

that's the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them. Take it

from me. I've made my life from the words, and I know that is so.

The back door was locked so I fished the spare key out from under the

mat and let myself in. The kitchen was empty, silent, suicidally clean. I

could hear the hum the fluorescent bars over the sink made when I turned

on the switch. It had been literally years since I had been up before my

mother; I couldn't even remember the last time such a thing had happened.

I took off my shirt and put it in the plastic clothes basket behind the

washing machine. I got a clean rag from under the sink and sponged off

with it-face, neck, pits, belly. Then unzipped my pants and scrubbed my

crotch-my testicles in particular-until my skin began to hurt. It seemed I

couldn't get clean enough down there, although the red weal left by the

bloodsucker was rapidly fading. I still have a tiny crescent-shaped scar

there.

My wife once asked about it and I told her a lie before I was even aware I

meant to do so.

When I was done with the rag, I threw it away. It was filthy.

I got out a dozen eggs and scrambled six of them together. When they

were semi-solid in the pan, I added a side dish of crushed pineapple and

half a quart of milk. I was just sitting down to eat when my mother came in,

her grey hair tied in a knot behind her head.

She was wearing a faded pink bathrobe and smoking a Camel.

'Gordon, where have you been?'

'Camping,' I said, and began to eat 'We started off in Vern's field and then

went up the Brickyard Hill. Vern's mom said she would call you. Didn't

she?'

'She probably talked to your father,' she said, and glided past me to the

sink. She looked like a pink ghost. The fluorescent bars were less than kind

to her face; they made her complexion look almost yellow. She sighed

almost sobbed. 'I miss Dennis most in the mornings,' she said. 'I always

look in his room and it's always empty, Gordon. Always.'

'Yeah, that's a bitch,' I said.

'He always slept with his window open and the blankets Gordon? Did

you say something?'

'Nothing important, Mom.'

' and the blankets pulled up to his chin,' she finished Then she just

stared out the window, her back to me. I went on eating. I was trembling all

over.

The story never did get out

Oh, I don't mean that Ray Brower's body was never found; it was. But

neither our gang nor their gang got the credit In the end, Ace must have

decided that an anonymous phonecall was the safest course, because that's

how the location of the corpse was reported. What I mean was that none of

our parents ever found out what we'd been up to that Labour Day weekend.

Chris's dad was still drinking, just as Chris had said he would be. His

mom had gone off to Lewiston to stay with her sister, the way she almost

always did when Mr Chambers was on a bender. She went and left Eyeball

in charge of the younger kids. Eyeball had fulfilled his responsibility by

going off with Ace and his buddies, leaving nine-year-old Sheldon, five-

year-old Emery, and two-year-old Deborah to sink or swim on their own.

Teddy's mom got worried the second night and called

Vern's mom. Vern's mom, who was also never going to do the gameshow

circuit, said we were still out in Vern's tent. She knew because she could

look right out the kitchen window and see a light on in there. Teddy's mom

said she sure hoped no one was smoking cigarettes in there and Vern's mom

said it looked like a flashlight to her, and besides, she was sure that none of

Vern's or Billy's friends smoked.

My dad asked me some vague questions, looked mildly troubled at my

evasive answers, said we'd go fishing together sometime, and that was the

end of it. If the parents had gotten together in the week or two afterwards,

everything would have fallen down but they never did.

Milo Pressman never spoke up, either. My guess is that he thought twice

about it being our word against his, and how we would all swear that he

sicced Chopper on me. So the story never came out-but that wasn't the end

of it.

One day near the end of the month, while I was walking some from

school, a black 1952 Ford cut into the curb in front of me. There was no

mistaking that car. Gangster whitewalls and spinner hubcaps, highrise

chrome bumpers. and lucite deathknob with a rose embedded in it clamped

to the steering wheel. Painted on the back deck was a deuce and a one-eyed

jack. Beneath them, in Roman Gothic script, were the words WILD CARD.

The doors flew open; Ace Merrill and Fuzzy Brackowicz stepped out

'Cheap hood, right?' Ace said, smiling his gentle smile 'My mother loves the

way I do it to her, right?'

'We're gonna rack you, baby,' Fuzzy said.

I dropped my schoolbooks on the sidewalk and ran. I was busting my

buns but they caught me before I even made the end of the block. Ace hit

me with a flying tackle and I went full-length on the paving. My chin hit the

cement and I didn't see stars; I saw whole constellations, whole nebulae. I

was already crying when they picked me up, not so much from my elbows

and knees, both pairs scraped and bleeding, or even from fear-it was vast,

impotent rage that made me cry. Chris was right. He had been ours. I

twisted and turned and almost squiggled free. Then Fuzzy hoicked his knee

into my crotch. The pain was amazing, incredible, nonpareil; it widened the

horizons of pain from plain old wide screen to Vista Vision. I began to

scream. Screaming seemed to be my best chance.

Ace punched me twice in the face, long and looping haymaker blows.

The first one closed my left eye; it would be four days before I was really

able to see out of that eye again The second broke my nose with a crunch

that sounded the way crispy cereal sounds inside your head when you chew.

Then old Mrs Chalmers came out on her porch with her cane clutched in

one arthritis-twisted hand and a Herbert Tareyton jutting from one corner of

her mouth. She began to bellow at them: 'Hi! Hi there, you boys! You stop

that! Let 'im alone! Let 'im up! Bullies! Bullies! Two on one! Police!

Poleeeece!'

'Don't let me see you around, dipshit,' Ace said, smiling, and they let go

of me and backed off. I sat up and then leaned over, cupping my wounded

balls, sickly sure I was going to throw up and then die. I was still crying,

too. But when Fuzzy started

to walk around me, the sight of his pegged jeans-leg snugged down over

the top of his motorcycle boot brought all the fury back. I grabbed him and

bit his calf through his jeans. I bit him just as hard as I could. Fuzzy began

to do a little screaming of his own. He also began hopping around on one

leg, and, incredibly, he was calling me a dirty fighter. I was watching him

hop around and that was when Ace stamped down on my left hand,

breaking the first two fingers. I heard them break. They didn't sound like

crispy cereal. They sounded like pretzels. Then Ace and Fuzzy were going

back to Ace's '52, Ace sauntering with his hands in his back pockets, Fuzzy

hopping on one leg and throwing curses back over his shoulder at me. I

curled up on the sidewalk, crying. Aunt Evvie Chalmers came down her

walk, thudding her cane angrily as she came. She asked me if I needed the

doctor. I sat up and managed to stop most of the crying. I told her I didn't.

'Bullshit,' she bellowed-Aunt Evvie was deaf and bellowed everything. 'I

saw where that bully got you. Boy, your sweetmeats are going to swell up

to the size of Mason jars.' She took me into her house, gave me a wet rag

for my nose-it had begun to resemble a summer squash by then-and gave

me a big cup of medicinal-tasting coffee that was somehow calming. She

kept bellowing at me that she should call the doctor and I kept telling her

not to. Finally she gave up and I walked home. Very slowly, I walked home.

My balls weren't the size of Mason jars yet, but they were on their way. My

mom and dad got a look at me and wigged right out -I was sort of surprised

that they noticed anything at all, to tell the truth. Who were the boys? Could

I pick them out of a line-up? That from my father, who never missed Naked

City and The Untouchables. I said I didn't think I could pick the boys out of

a line-up. I said I was tired. Actually I think I was in shock-in shock and

more than a little drunk from Aunt Evvie's coffee, which must have been at

least sixty per cent VSOP brandy. I said I thought they were from some

other town, or from 'up the city'- a phrase everyone understood to mean

Lewiston-Auburn.

They took me to Dr Clarkson in the station wagon-Dr Clarkson, who is

still alive today, was even then old enough to have quite possibly been on

armchair-to-armchair terms with God. He set my nose and my fingers and

gave my mother a prescription for painkiller. Then he got them out of the

examining room on some pretext or other and came over to me, shuffling,

head forward, like Boris Karloff approaching Igor.

'Who did it, Gordon?'

'I don't know, Dr Cla-'

'You're lying.'

'No, sir. Huh-uh.'

His sallow cheeks began to glow with colour. 'Why should you protect

the cretins who did this? Do you think they will respect you? They will

laugh and call you stupid-fool!

"Oh," they'll say, "there goes the stupid fool we beat up for kicks the

other day. Ha-ha! Hoo-hoo! Har-de-har-har-har!"'

'I didn't know them. Really.'

I could see his hands itching to shake me, but of course he couldn't do

that. So he sent me out to my parents, shaking his white head and muttering

about juvenile delinquents. He would no doubt tell his old friend God all

about it that night over their cigars and sherry.

I didn't care if Ace and Fuzzy and the rest of those assholes respected me

or thought I was stupid or never thought about me at all. But there was

Chris to think of. His brother Eyeball had broken his arm in two places and

had left his face looking like a Canadian sunrise. They had to set the elbow-

break with a steel pin. Mrs

McGinn from down the road saw Chris staggering along the soft

shoulder, bleeding from both ears and reading a Richie Rich comic book.

She took him to the CMG Emergency Room where Chris told the doctor he

had fallen down the cellar stairs in the dark.

'Right,' the doctor said, every bit as disgusted with Chris as Dr Clarkson

had been with me, and then he went to call Sheriff Bannerman.

While he did that from his office, Chris went slowly down the hall,

holding the temporary sling against his chest so the arm wouldn't swing and

grate the broken bones together, and used a nickel in the pay phone to call

home-he told me later it was the first collect call he had ever made and he

was scared to death that Mrs McGinn wouldn't accept the charges-but she

did.

'Chris, are you all right?' she asked.

'Yes, thank you,' Chris said.

'I'm sorry I couldn't stay with you, Chris, but I had pies in the-'

'That's all right, Missus McGinn,' Chris said. 'Can you see the Buick in

our dooryard?'

The Buick was the car Chris's mother drove. It was ten years old and

when the engine got hot it smelted like frying Hush Puppies.

'It's there,' she said cautiously. Best not to mix in too much with the

Chamberses. Poor white trash; shanty Irish.

'Would you go over and tell Mamma to go downstairs and take the

lightbulb out of the socket in the cellar?'

'Chris, I really, my pies -'

'Tell her,' Chris said implacably, 'to do it right away. Unless she maybe

wants my brother to go to jail.'

Vern and Teddy took their lumps, too, although not as bad as either Chris

or I. Billy was laying for Vern when Vern got home. He took after him with

a stovelength and hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious after only

four or five good licks. Vern was no more than stunned, but Billy got scared

he might have killed him and stopped. Three of them caught Teddy walking

home from the vacant lot one afternoon. They punched him out and broke

his glasses. He fought them, but they wouldn't fight him when they realized

he was groping after them like a blindman in the dark.

We hung out together at school looking like the remains of a Korean

assault force. Nobody knew exactly what had happened, but everybody

understood that we'd had a pretty serious run-in with the big kids and

comported ourselves like men. A few stories went around. All of them were

wildly wrong.

When the casts came off and the bruises healed, Vern and Teddy just

drifted away. They had discovered a whole new group of contemporaries

that they could lord it over. Most of them were real wets-scabby, scrubby

little fifth-grade assholes-but Vern and Teddy kept bringing them to the

treehouse, ordering them around, strutting like Nazi generals. Chris and I

began to drop by there less and less frequently, and after a while the place

was theirs by default I remember going up one time in the spring of 1961

and noticing that the place smelled like a shootoff in a haymow. I never

went there again that I can recall. Teddy and Vern slowly became just two

more faces in the halls or in 3:30 detention. We nodded and said hi. That

was all. It happens. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a

restaurant, did you ever notice that? But when I think of that dream, the

corpses under the water pulling implacably at my legs, it seems right that it

should be that way. Some people drown, that's all. It's not fair, but it

happens. Some people drown.

Vern Tessio was killed in a housefire that swept a Lewiston apartment

building in 1966 -in Brooklyn and the Bronx, they call that sort of

apartment building a slum tenement, I believe. The Fire Department said it

started around two in the morning, and the entire building was nothing but

cinders in the cellar-hole by dawn. There had been a large drunken party;

Vern was there. Someone fell asleep in one of the bedrooms with a live

cigarette going. Vern himself, maybe, drifting off, dreaming of his pennies.

They identified him and the four others who died by their teeth.

Teddy went in a squalid car crash. There used to be a saying when I was

growing up: 'If you go out alone you're a hero. Take somebody else with

you and you're dogpiss. ' Teddy, who had wanted nothing but the service

since the time he was old enough to want anything, was turned down by the

Air Force and classified 4-F by the draft. Anyone who had seen his glasses

and his hearing aid knew it was going to happen-anyone but Teddy. In his

junior year at high school he got a three-day vacation from school for

calling the guidance counsellor a lying sack of shit. The g. o. had observed

Teddy coming in every so often-like every day-and checking over his

career-board for new service literature. He told Teddy that maybe he should

think about another career, and that was when Teddy blew his stack.

He was held back a year for repeated absences, tardies, and the attendant

flunked courses but he did graduate. He had an ancient Chevrolet Bel

Aire, and he used to hang around the places where Ace and Fuzzy and the

rest had hung around before him: the pool hall, the dance hall, Sukey's

Tavern, which is closed now, and the Mellow Tiger, which isn't. He

eventually got a job with the Castle Rock Public Works Department, filling

up holes with hotpatch. The crash happened over in Harlow. Teddy's Bel

Aire was full of his friends (two of them had been part of that group he and

Vern took to bossing around way back in 1960), and they were all passing

around a couple of joints and a couple of bottles of Popov. They hit a utility

pole and sheared it off and the Chevrolet rolled six times. One girl came out

technically still alive. She lay for six months in what the nurses and

orderlies at Central Maine General call the C&T Ward-Cabbages and

Turnips. Then some merciful phantom pulled the plug on her respirator.

Teddy Duchamp was posthumously awarded the Dogpiss of the Year

Award.

Chris enrolled in the college courses in his second year of junior high-he

and I both knew that if he waited any longer it would be too late; he would

never catch up. Everyone jawed at him about it: his parents, who thought he

was putting on airs, his friends, most of whom dismissed him as a pussy, the

guidance counsellor, who didn't believe he could do the work, and most of

all the teachers, who didn't approve of this duck-tailed, leather-jacketed,

engineer-booted apparition who had materialized without warning in their

classrooms. You could see that the sight of those boots and that many-

zippered jacket offended them in connection with such high-minded

subjects as algebra, Latin, and earth science; such attire was meant for the

shop courses only. Chris sat among the well-dressed, vivacious boys and

girls from the middle-class families in Castle View and Brickyard Hill like

some silent, brooding Grendel that might turn on them at any moment,

produce a horrible roaring like the sound of dual glasspack mufflers, and

gobble them up, penny loafers, Peter Pan

collars, button-down paisley shirts and all. He almost quit a dozen times

that year. His father in particular hounded him, accusing Chris of thinking

he was better than his old man, accusing Chris of wanting 'to go up there to

the college so you can turn me into a bankrupt.' He once broke a Rhinegold

bottle over the back of Chris's head and Chris wound up in the CMC

Emergency Room again, where it took four stitches to close his scalp. His

old friends, most of whom were now majoring in Smoking Area, catcalled

him on the streets. The guidance counsellor huckstered him to take at least

some shop courses so he wouldn't flunk the whole slate. Worst of all, of

course, was just this: he'd been fucking off for the entire first seven years of

his public education, and now the bill had come due with a vengeance. We

studied together almost every night, sometimes for as long as six hours at a

stretch. I always came away from those sessions exhausted, and sometimes

I came away frightened as well-frightened by his incredulous rage at just

how murderously high that bill was. Before he could even begin to

understand Introductory Algebra, he had to relearn the fractions that he and

Teddy and Vern had played pocket pool through in the fifth grade. Before

he could even begin to understand Pater noster qui est in caelis, he had to be

told what nouns and prepositions and objects were. On the inside of his

English grammar, neatly lettered, were the words FUCK GERUNDS. His

compositional ideas were good and not badly organized, but his grammar

was bad and he approached the whole business of punctuation as if with a

shotgun. He wore out his copy of Warriner's and bought another in a

Portland bookstore-it was the first hardcover book he actually owned, and it

became a queer sort of Bible to him.

But by our junior year in high school, he had been accepted. Neither of

us made top honours, but I came out seventh and Chris stood nineteenth.

We were both accepted at the University of Maine, but I went to the Orono

campus while Chris enrolled at the Portland campus. Pre-law, can you

believe that? More Latin. We both dated through high school, but no girl

ever came between us. Does that sound like we went faggot? It would have

to most of our old friends, Vern and Teddy included. But it was only

survival. We were clinging to each other in deep water. I've explained about

Chris, I think; my reasons for clinging to him were less definable. His

desire to get away from Castle Rock and out of the mill's shadow seemed to

me to be my best part, and I could not just leave him to sink or swim on his

own. If he had drowned, that part of me would have drowned with him, I

think.

Near the end of the spring semester in 1968, the year when we all grew

our hair long and cut classes to go to teach-ins about the war in Viet Nam,

Chris went into a Chicken Delight to get a three-piece Snack Bucket Just

ahead of him, two men started arguing about which one had been first in

line. One of them pulled a knife. Chris, who had always been the best of us

at making peace, stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat The

man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions; he had been

released from Shawshank Penitentiary only the week before. Chris died

almost instantly. I was out of school when I read about it in the paper -Chris

had been finishing his second year of graduate studies. Me, I had been

married a year and a half and was teaching high school English. My wife

was pregnant and I was trying to write a book. When I read the news item-

STUDENT FATALLY STABBED IN PORTLAND RESTAURANT -I told

my wife I was going out for a milkshake. I drove out of town, parked, and

cried for him. Cried for damn near half an hour, I guess. I couldn't have

done that in front of my wife, much as I love her. It would have been pussy.

'I'm a writer now, like I said. A lot of the critics think what I write is shit.

A lot of the time I think they are right but it still freaks me out to put those

words, 'Freelance Writer', down in the Occupation blank of the forms you

have to fill out at credit desks and in doctors' offices. My story sounds so

much like a fairytale that it's fucking absurd. I sold the book and it was

made into a movie and the movie got good reviews and it was a smash hit

besides. This all had happened by the time I was twenty-six. The second

book was made into a movie as well, as was the third. I told you-it's fucking

absurd. Meantime, my wife doesn't seem to mind having me around the

house and we have three kids now. They all seem perfect to me, and most of

the time I'm happy. But the writing isn't so easy or as much fun as it used to

be. The phone rings a lot. Sometimes I get headaches, bad ones, and then I

have to go into a dim room and lie down until they go away. The doctor

says they aren't true migraines; he called them 'stressaches' and told me to

slow down. I worry about myself sometimes. What a stupid habit that is

and yet I can't quite seem to stop it. And I wonder if there is really any point

in what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man

can get sick playing 'let's pretend!.

But it's funny how I saw Ace Merrill again. My friends are dead but Ace

is alive. I saw him pulling out of the mill parking lot just after the three

o'clock whistle the last time I took my kids down home to see my dad.

The '52 Ford had become a '77 Ford station wagon. A faded bumper-

sticker said REAGAN/BUSH 1980. His hair was mowed into a crewcut and

he'd gotten fat. The sharp. handsome features I remembered were now

buried in an avalanche of flesh. I had left the kids with dad long enough to

go downtown and get the paper. I was standing on the corner of Main and

Carbine and he glanced at me as I waited to cross. There was no sign of

recognition on the face of this thirty-two-year-old man who had broken my

nose in another dimension of time.

I watched him wheel the Ford wagon into the dirt parking lot beside the

Mellow Tiger, get out, hitch at his pants, and walk inside. I could imagine

the brief wedge of country-western as he opened the door, the brief sour

whiff of Knick and Gansett on draught, the welcoming shouts of the other

regulars as he closed the door and placed his large ass on the same stool

which had probably held him up for at least three hours every day of his

life-except Sundays-since he was twenty-one. I thought: So that's what Ace

is now.

I looked to the left, and beyond the mill I could see the Castle River, not

so wide now but a little cleaner, still flowing under the bridge between

Castle Rock and Harlow. The trestle upstream is gone now, but the river is

still around. So am I.

The End

THE BREATHING METHOD

1: The Club

I dressed a bit more speedily than normal on that snowy, windy, bitter

night-I admit it. It was 23 December, 1970, and I suspect that there were

other members of the club who did the same. Taxis are notoriously hard to

come by in New York on stormy nights, so I called for a radio-cab. I did

this at five-thirty for an eight o'clock pick-up-my wife raised an eyebrow

but said nothing. I was under the awning of the apartment building on East

58th Street, where Ellen and I had lived since 1946, by quarter to eight, and

when the taxi was five minutes late, I found myself pacing up and down

impatiently.

The taxi arrived at 8.10 and I got in, too glad to be out of the wind to be

as angry with the driver as he probably deserved. That wind, part of a cold

front that had swept down from Canada the day before, meant business. It

whistled and whined around the cab's window, occasionally drowning out

the salsa on the driver's radio and rocking the big Checker on its springs.

Many of the stores were open but the sidewalks were nearly bare of last-

minute shoppers. Those that were abroad looked uncomfortable or actually

pained.

It had been flurrying off and on all day, and now the snow began again,

coming first in thin membranes, then twisting into cyclone shapes ahead of

us in the street. Coming home that night, I would think of the combination

of snow, a taxi, and New York City with considerably greater unease but I

did not of course know that then.

At the corner of 3rd and Fortieth, a large tinsel Christmas bell went

floating through the intersection like a spirit. 'Bad night,' the cabbie said.

"They'll have an extra two dozen in the morgue tomorrow. Wino Popsicles.

Plus a few bag-lady Popsicles.'

'I suppose.'

The cabbie ruminated. 'Well, good riddance,' he said finally. 'Less

welfare,

right?'

'Your Christmas spirit,' I said, 'is stunning in its width and depth.'

The cabbie ruminated. 'You one of those bleeding-hear liberals?' he asked

finally.

'I refuse to answer on the grounds that my answer might tend to

incriminate me,' I said.

The cabbie gave a why-do-I-always-get-the-wisenheimers snort but he

shut up.

He let me out at 2nd and Thirty-Fifth, and I walked halfway down the

block to the club, bent over against the whistling wind, holding my hat on

my head with one gloved hand.

In almost no time at all the life-force seemed to have been driven deep

into my body, a flickering blue flame about the size of the pilot-light in a

gas oven. At seventy-three, a man feels the cold quicker and deeper. That

man should be home in front of a fireplace or at least in front of an electric

heater. At seventy-three, hot blood isn't even really a memory; it's more of

an academic concept.

The latest flurry was letting up, but snow as dry as sand still beat into my

face. I was glad to see that the steps leading up to the door of 249 had been

sanded-that was Stevens's work, of course-Stevens knew the base alchemy

of old age well enough: not lead into gold but bones into glass. When I

think about such things, I believe that God probably thinks a great deal like

Groucho Marx.

Then Stevens was there, holding the door open, and a moment later I was

inside. Down the mahogany-panelled hallway, through double doors

standing three-quarters of the way open on their recessed tracks, into the

library cum reading-room cum bar. It was a dark room in which occasional

pools of light gleamed-reading-lamps. A richer, more textured light glowed

across the oak parquet floor, and I could hear the steady snap of birch logs

in the huge fireplace. The heat radiated all the way across the room -surely

there is no welcome for a man or a woman that can equal a fire on the

hearth. A paper rustled-dry, slightly impatient. That would be Johanssen,

with his Wall Street Journal. After ten years, it was possible to recognize his

presence simply by the way he read his stocks. Amusing and in a quiet

way, amazing.

Stevens helped me off with my overcoat, murmuring that it was a dirty

night; WCBS was now forecasting heavy snow before morning.

I agreed that it was indeed a dirty night and looked back into that big,

high-ceilinged room again. A dirty night, a roaring fire and a ghost story.

Did I say that at seventy-three hot blood is a thing of the past? Perhaps so.

But I felt something warm in my chest at the thought something that

hadn't been caused by the fire of Stevens's reliable, dignified welcome.

I think it was because it was McCarron's turn to tell the tale.

I had been coming to the brownstone which stands at 249 East 35th

Street for ten years -coming at intervals that were almost-but not quite-

regular. In my own mind I think of it is a 'gentleman's club', that amusing

pre-Gloria Steinem antiquity. But even now I am not sure that's what it

really is, or how it came to be in the first place. On the night Emlyn

McCarron told his story-the story of the Breathing Method-there were

perhaps thirteen clubmembers in all, although only six of us had come out

on that howling, bitter night. I can remember years when there might have

been as few as eight full-time members, and others when there were at least

twenty, and perhaps more. I suppose Stevens might know how it all came to

be-one thing I am sure of is that Stevens has been there from the first, no

matter how long that may be and I believe Stevens to be older than he

looks. Much, much older. He has a faint Brooklyn accent, but in spite of

that he is as brutally correct and as cuttingly punctilious as a third-

generation English butler. His reserve is part of his often maddening charm,

and Stevens's small smile is a locked and latched door. I have never seen

any club records-if he keeps them. I have never gotten a receipt of dues-

there are no dues. I have never been called by the club secretary-there is no

secretary, and at 249 East 35 th, there are no phones. There is no box of

white marbles and black balls. And the club-if it is a club-has never had a

name.

I first came to the club (as I must continue to call it) as the guest of

George Waterhouse. Waterhouse headed the law firm for which I had

worked since 1951. My progress upward in the firm-one of New York's

three biggest-had been steady but extremely slow; I was a slogger, a mule

for work, something of a centrepuncher but I had no real flair or genius. I

had seen men who had begun at the same time I had, promoted in giant

steps while I only continued to pace -and I saw it with no real surprise.

Waterhouse and I had exchanged pleasantries, attended the obligatory

dinner put on by the firm each October, and had little more congress until

the fall of 1960, when he dropped by my office one day in early November.

This in itself was unusual enough, and it had me thinking black thoughts

(dismissal) that were counterbalanced by giddy ones (an unexpected

promotion). It

was a puzzling visit. Waterhouse leaned in the doorway, his Phi Beta

Kappa key gleaming mellowly on his vest, and talked in amiable

generalities-none of what he said seemed to have any real substance or

importance. I kept expecting him to finish the pleasantries and get down to

cases: 'Now about this Casey brief,' or 'We've been asked to research the

Mayor's appointment of Salkowitz to -' But it seemed there were no cases.

He glanced at his watch, said he had enjoyed our talk and that he had to be

going. I was still blinking, bewildered, when he turned back and said

casually: There's a place where I go most Thursday nights-a sort of club.

Old duffers, mostly, but some of them are good company. They keep a

really excellent cellar, if you've a palate. Every now and then someone tells

a good story, as well. Why not come down some night, David? As my

guest.'

I stammered some reply-even now I'm not sure what it was. I was

bewildered by the offer. It had a spur-of-the-moment sound, but there was

nothing spur-of-tbe-moment about his eyes, blue Anglo-Saxon ice under the

bushy white whorls of his eyebrows. And if I don't remember exactly how I

replied, it was because I felt suddenly sure that this offer -vague and

puzzling as it was-had been exactly the specific I had kept expecting him to

get down to.

Ellen's reaction that evening was one of amused exasperation. I had been

with Waterhouse, Garden, Lawton, Frasier, and Effingham for something

like twenty years, and it was clear enough that I could not expect to rise

much above the mid-level position I now held; it was her idea that this was

the firm's cost-efficient substitute for a gold watch.

'Old men telling war stories and playing poker,' she said. 'A night of that

and you're supposed to be happy in the Research Library until they pension

you off, I suppose oh, I put two Becks' on ice for you.' And she kissed me

warmly. I suppose she had seen something on my face-God knows she's

good at reading me after all the years we've spent together.

Nothing happened over a course of weeks. When my mind turned to

Waterhouse's odd offer-certainly odd coming from a man with whom I met

less than a dozen times a year, and who I only saw socially at perhaps three

parties a year, including the company party in October- I supposed that I

had been mistaken about the expression in his eyes, that he really had made

the offer casually, and had forgotten it. Or regretted it-ouch! And then he

approached me one late afternoon, a man of nearly seventy who was still

broad-shouldered and athletic looking. I was shrugging on my topcoat with

my briefcase between my feet. He said: 'If you'd still like to have a drink at

the club, why not come tonight?' 'Well, I '

'Good.' He slapped a slip of paper into my hand. 'Here's the address.' He

was waiting for me at the foot of the steps that evening, and Stevens held

the door for us. The wine was as excellent as Waterhouse had promised. He

made no attempt whatsoever to 'introduce me around'- I took that for

snobbery but later recanted the idea -but two or three of them introduced

themselves to me. One of those who did so was Emlyn McCarron, even

then in his early seventies. He held out his hand and I clasped it briefly. His

skin was dry, leathery, tough; almost turtlelike. He asked me if I played

bridge. I said I did not.

'God damned good thing,' he said 'That god damned game has done more

in this century to kill intelligent after-dinner conversation than anything else

I can think of.' And with that pronouncement he walked away into the murk

of the library, where shelves of books went up apparently to infinity.

I looked around for Waterhouse, but he had disappeared. Feeling a little

uncomfortable and a lot out of place, I wandered over to the fireplace. It

was, as I believe I have already mentioned, a huge thing-it seemed

particularly huge in New York, where apartment-dwellers such as myself

have trouble imagining such a benevolence big enough to do anything more

than pop corn or toast bread. The fireplace at 249 East 35th was big enough

to broil an ox whole. There was no mantle; instead a brawny stone arch

curved over it This arch was broken in the centre by a keystone which

jutted out slightly. It was just on the level of my eyes, and although the light

was dim, I could read the legend engraved on that stone with no trouble: IT

IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT. 'Here you go, David,'

Waterhouse said from my elbow, and I jumped. He hadn't deserted me after

all; had only trudged off into some uncharted locale to bring back drinks.

'Bombay martini's yours, isn't it?'

'Yes. Thank you. Mr Waterhouse -'

'George,' he said. 'Here it's just George.'

'George, then,' I said, although it seemed slightly mad to be using his first

name. 'What is all of-'

'Cheers,' he said.

We drank. The martini was perfect. I said so instead of finishing my

question. 'Stevens tends the bar. He makes fine drinks. He likes to say it's a

small but vital skill. ' The martini took the edge off my feelings of

disorientation and awkwardness (the edge, but the feelings themselves

remained- I had spent nearly half an hour gazing into my closet and

wondering what to wear; I had finally settled on dark brown slacks and a

rough tweed jacket that almost matched them, hoping I would not be

wandering into a group of men either turned out in tuxedos or wearing

bluejeans and L. L. Bean's lumberjack shirts it seemed that I hadn't gone

too far wrong on the matter of dress, anyway). A new place and a new

situation makes one crucially aware of every social act, no matter how

small, and at that moment, drink in hand and the obligatory small toast

made, I wanted very much to be sure that I hadn't overlooked any of the

amenities. 'Is there a guest book I ought to sign?' I asked. 'Something like

that?' He looked mildly surprised. 'We don't have anything like that,' he

said. 'At least, I don't think we do.' He glanced around the dim, quiet room.

Johanssen rattled his Wall Street Journal, I saw Stevens pass in a doorway

at the far end of the room, ghostly in his white messjacket. George put his

drink on an endtable and tossed a fresh log onto the fire. Sparks

corkscrewed up the black throat of the chimney.

'What does that mean?' I asked, pointing to the inscription on the

keystone. 'Any idea?' Waterhouse read it carefully, as if for the first time. IT

IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT.

'I suppose I have an idea,' he said. 'You may, too, if you should come

back. Yes, I should say you may have an idea or two. In time. Enjoy

yourself, David.' He walked away. And, although it may seem odd, having

been left to sink or swim in such an unfamiliar situation, I did enjoy myself.

For one thing, I have always loved books, and there was a trove of

interesting ones to examine here. I walked slowly along the shelves,

examining the spines as best I could in the faint light, pulling one out now

and then, and pausing once to look out a narrow window at the 2nd Avenue

intersection up the street. I stood there and watched through the frost-

rimmed glass as the traffic light at the intersection cycled from red to green

to amber and back to red again, and quite suddenly I felt the queerest-and

yet very welcome -sense of peace come to me. It did not flood in; instead it

seemed to almost steal in. Oh yes, I can hear you saying, that makes great

sense; watching a stop-and-go light gives everyone a sense of peace. All

right; it made no sense. I grant you that. But the feeling was there, just the

same. It made me think for the first time in years of the winter nights in the

Wisconsin farmhouse where I grew up: lying in bed in a draughty upstairs

room and marking the contrast between the whistle of the January wind

outside, drifting snow as dry as sand along miles of snow-fence, and the

warmth my body created under the two quilts. There were some law books,

but they were pretty damn strange: Twenty Cases of Dismemberment and

Their Outcomes under British Law is one title I remember. Pet Cases was

another. I opened that one and sure enough, it was a scholarly legal tome

dealing with the law's treatment (American law, this time) of cases which

bore in some important respect upon pets-everything from housecats that

had inherited great sums of money to an ocelot that had broken its chain

and seriously injured a postman. There was a set of Dickens, a set of Defoe,

a nearly endless set of Trollope; and there was also a set of novels-eleven of

them-by a man named Edward Gray Seville. They were bound in handsome

green leather, and the name of the firm gold-stamped on the spine was

Stedham & Son. I had never heard of Seville nor of his publishers. The

date of the last, Breakers, was 1935.

Two shelves down from the set of Seville novels was a large folio volume

which contained careful step by step plans for Erector Set enthusiasts. Next

to it was another folio volume which featured famous scenes from famous

movies. Each of these pictures filled one whole page, and opposite each,

filling the facing pages, were free-verse poems either about the scenes with

which they were paired or inspired by them. Not a very remarkable concept,

but the poets who were represented were remarkable-Robert Frost,

Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Louis

Zukofsky, and Erica Jong, to mention just a few. Halfway through the book

I found a poem by Archibald MacLeish set next to that famous photograph

of Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grating and trying to hold her

skirt down. The poem was titled The Toll' and it began: The shape of the

skirt is -we would say-the shape of a bell The legs are the clapper-And

some such more. Not a terrible poem, but certainly not MacLeish's best or

anywhere near the top drawer. I felt I could hold such an opinion because I

had read a good deal of Archibald MacLeish over the years. I could not,

however, recall this poem about Marilyn Monroe (which it is; the poem

announces it even when divorced from the picture-at the end MacLeish

writes: My legs clap my name: (Marilyn, ma belle). I have looked for it

since then and haven't been able to find it; which means nothing, of

course. Poems are not like novels or legal opinions; they are more like

blown leaves and any omnibus volume titled The Complete So-and-So must

certainly be a lie. Poems have a way of getting lost under sofas-it is one of

their charms, and one of the reasons they endure. But -At some point

Stevens came by with a second martini (by then I had settled into a chair of

my own with a volume of Ezra Pound). It was as perfect as the first. As I

sipped it I saw two of those present, George Gregson and Harry Stein

(Harry was six years dead on the night Emlyn McCarron told us the story of

the Breathing Method), leave the room by a peculiar door less than three

feet high. It was an Alice Down the Rabbit-Hole door if ever there was one.

They left it open, and shortly after their odd exit from the library I heard the

muted click of billiard balls.

Stevens passed by and asked if I would like another martini. I declined

with real regret. He nodded. 'Very good sir.' His face never changed, and yet

I had an obscure feeling that I had somehow pleased him.

Laughter startled me from my book sometime later. Someone had thrown

a packet of chemical powder into the fire and turned the flames

momentarily particoloured. I thought of my boyhood again but not in any

wistful, sloppily romantic-nostalgic way. I feel a great need to emphasize

that, God knows why. I thought of times when I had done just such a thing

as a kid, but the memory was a strong one, pleasant, untinged with regret.

I saw that most of the others had drawn chairs up around the hearth in a

semicircle. Stevens had produced a heaping, smoking platter of marvellous

hot sausages. Harry Stein returned through the down-the-rabbit-hole door,

introducing himself hurriedly but pleasantly to me. Gregson remained in the

billiard room, practising shots, by the sound. After a moment's hesitation I

joined the others. A story was told-not a pleasant one. It was Norman Stett

who told it, and while it is not my purpose to recount it here, perhaps you'll

understand what I mean about its quality if I tell you that it was about a man

who drowned in a telephone booth.

When Stett-who is also dead now-finished, someone said, 'You should

have saved it for Christmas, Norman.' There was laughter, which I of course

did not understand. At least, not then.

Waterhouse himself spoke up then, and such a Waterhouse I never would

have dreamed of in a thousand years of dreaming. A graduate of Yale, a Phi

Beta Kappa, silver-haired, three-piece-suited head of a law firm so large it

was more enterprise than company-this Waterhouse told a story that had to

do with a teacher who had gotten stuck in a privy. The privy stood behind

the one-room schoolhouse in which she had taught, and the day she got her

caboose jammed into one of the privy's two holes also happened to be the

day the privy was scheduled to be taken away as Anniston County's

contribution to the Life As It Was in New England exhibition being held at

the Prudential Center in Boston. The teacher hadn't made a sound during all

the time it took to load the privy onto the back of a flatbed truck and to

spike it down; she was struck dumb with embarrassment and horror,

Waterhouse said. And then the privy door blew off into the passing lane of

Route 128 in Somerville during rush hour-But draw a curtain over that, and

over any other stories which might have followed it; they are not my stories

tonight. At some point Stevens produced a bottle of brandy that was more

than just good; it was damned near exquisite. It was passed around and

Johanssen raised a toast-the toast, one might almost say: The tale, not he

who tells it. We drank to that.

Not long after, men began slipping away. It wasn't late; not yet midnight,

anyway; but I've noticed that when your fifties give way to your sixties, late

begins coming earlier and earlier. I saw Waterhouse slipping his arms into

the overcoat Stevens was holding open for him, and decided that must be

my cue. I thought it strange that Waterhouse would slip away without so

much as a word to me (which certainly seemed to be what he was doing; if I

had come back from shelving the Pound book forty seconds later, he would

have been gone), but no stranger than most of the other things that had gone

on that evening.

I stepped out just behind him, and Waterhouse glanced around, as if

surprised to see me and almost as if he had been startled out of a light

doze. 'Share a taxi?' he asked, as though we had just met by chance on this

deserted, windy street 'Thank you,' I said. I meant thanks for a great deal

more than his offer to share a cab, and I believe that was unmistakable in

my tone, but he nodded as if that was all I had meant.

A taxi with its for-hire light lit was cruising slowly down the street-

fellows like George Waterhouse seem to luck onto cabs even on those

miserably cold or snowy New York nights when you would swear there isn't

a cab to be had on the entire island of Manhattan-and he flagged it.

Inside, safely warm, the taxi-meter charting our journey in measured

clicks, I told him how much I had enjoyed his story. I couldn't remember

laughing so hard or

so spontaneously since I was eighteen, I told him, which was not flattery

but only the simple truth.

'Oh? How kind of you to say.' His voice was chillingly polite. I subsided,

feeling a dull flush in my cheeks. One does not always need to hear a slam

to know that the door has been closed.

When the taxi drew up to the curb in front of my building, I thanked him

again, and this time he showed a trifle more warmth. 'It was good of you to

come on such short notice,' he said. 'Come again, if you like. Don't wait for

an invitation: we don't stand much on ceremony at two-four-nine.

Thursdays are best for stories, but the club is there every night.'

Am I then to assume membership?

The question was on my lips. I meant to ask it; it seemed necessary to ask

it. I was only mulling it over, listening to it in my head (in my tiresome

lawyer's way) to hear if I had got the phrasing right-perhaps that was a little

too blunt-when Waterhouse told the cabbie to drive on. The next moment

the taxi was rolling on towards Madison. I stood there on the sidewalk for a

moment, the hem of my topcoat whipping around my shins, thinking: He

knew I was going to ask that question-he knew it, and he purposely had the

driver go on before I could. Then I told myself that was utterly absurd -

paranoid, even.

And it was. But it was also true. I could scoff all I liked; none of the

scoffing changed that essential certainty.

I walked slowly to the door of my building and went inside.

Ellen was sixty per cent asleep when I sat down on the bed to take off my

shoes. She rolled over and made a fuzzy interrogative sound deep in her

throat. I told her to go back to sleep.

She made the fuzzy sound again. This time approximated English:

'Howwuzzit?'

For a moment I hesitated, my shirt half-unbuttoned. And I thought with

one moment's utter clarity: If I tell her, I will never see the other side of that

door again.

'It was all right,' I said. 'Old men telling war stories.'

'I told you so.'

'But it wasn't bad. I might go back again. It might do me some good with

the

firm.'

'"The firm",' she mocked lightly. 'What an old buzzard you are, my love.'

'It takes one to know one,' I said, but she had already fallen asleep again.

I undressed, showered, towelled, put on my pyjamas and then, instead of

going to bed as I should have done (it was edging past one by that time), I

put on my robe and had another bottle of Beck's. I sat at the kitchen table,

drinking it slowly, looking out the window and up the cold canyon of

Madison Avenue, thinking. My head was a trifle buzzy from my evening's

intake of alcohol-for me an unexpectedly large intake. But the feeling was

not at all unpleasant, and I had no sense of an impending hangover.

The thought which had come to me when Ellen asked me about my

evening was as ridiculous as the one I'd entertained about George

Waterhouse as the cab drew away from me -what in God's name could be

wrong with telling my wife about a perfectly harmless evening at my boss's

stuffy men's club and even if something were wrong with telling her, who

would know that I had? No, it was every bit as ridiculous and paranoid as

those earlier musings and, my heart told me, every bit as true.

I met George Waterhouse the next day in the hallway between Accounts

and the Reading Library. Met him Passed him would be more accurate. He

nodded my way and went on without speaking as he had done for years.

My stomach muscles ached all day long. That was the only thing that

completely convinced me the evening had been real.

Three weeks passed. Four five. No second invitation came from

Waterhouse.

Somehow I just hadn't been right; hadn't fitted. Or so I told myself. It was

a depressing, disappointing thought. I supposed it would begin to fade and

lose its sting, as all disappointments eventually do. But I thought of that

evening at the oddest moments-the isolated pools of library lamplight, so

still and tranquil and somehow civilized; Waterhouse's absurd and hilarious

tale of the schoolteacher stuck in the privy; the rich smell of leather in the

narrow stacks. Most of all I thought of standing by that narrow window and

watching the frost crystals change from green to amber to red. I thought of

that sense of peace I had felt.

During that same five-week period I went to the library and checked out

four volumes of Archibald MacLeish's poetry (I had three others myself,

and had already checked through them); one of these volumes purported to

be The Complete Poems of. I reacquainted myself with some old favourites,

including my favourite MacLeish poem, 'Epistle to Be Left in Earth.' But I

found no poem called 'The Toll' in any of the volumes.

On that same trip to the New York Public Library, I checked the card

catalogue for works of fiction by a man named Edward Gray Seville. A

mystery novel by a woman named Ruth Seville was the closest I came.

Come again, if you like; don't wait for an invitation

I was waiting for an invitation anyway, of course; my mother taught me

donkey's years ago not to automatically believe people who tell you glibly

to 'drop by anytime' or that 'the door is always open'. I didn't feel I needed

an engraved card delivered to my apartment door by a footman in livery

bearing a gilt plate, I don't mean that, but I did want something, even if it

was only a casual remark: 'Coming by some night, David? Hope we didn't

bore you.' That kind of thing.

But when even that didn't come, I began to think more seriously about

going back anyway-after all, sometimes people really did want you to drop

in anytime; I supposed that, at some places, the door always was open; and

that mothers weren't always right.

 don't wait for an invitation

Anyway, that's how it happened that, on 10 December of that year, I

found myself putting on my rough tweed coat and dark brown pants again

and looking for my darkish red tie. I was rather more aware of my heartbeat

than usual that night, I remember.

'George Waterhouse finally broke down and asked you back?' Ellen

asked. 'Back into the sty with the rest of the male chauvinist oinkers?'

'That's right,' I said, thinking it must be the first time in at least a dozen

years that I had told her a lie and then I remembered that, after the first

meeting, I had answered her questions about what it had been like with a

lie. Old men telling war stories, I had said.

'Well, maybe there really will be a promotion in it,' she said though

without much hope. To her credit, she said it without much bitterness,

either.

'Stranger things have happened,' I said, and kissed her goodbye.

'Oink-oink,' she said as I went out the door.

The taxi ride that night seemed very long. It was cold, still, and starry.

The cab was a Checker and I felt somehow very small in it, like a child

seeing the city for the first time.

It was excitement I was feeling as the cab pulled up in front of the

brownstone-something as simple and yet complete as that. But such simple

excitement seems to be one of life's qualities that slips away almost

unnoticed, and its rediscovery as one grows older is always something of a

surprise, like finding a black hair or two in one's comb years after one had

last found such a thing.

I paid the driver, got out, and walked towards the four steps leading to the

door. As I mounted them, my excitement curdled into plain apprehension (a

feeling the old are much more familiar with). What exactly was I doing

here?

The door was of thick panelled oak, and to my eye it looked as stout as

the door of a castle keep. There was no doorbell that I could see, no

knocker, no closed circuit TV camera mounted unobtrusively hi the shadow

of a deep eave, and, of course, no Waterhouse waiting to take me in. I

stopped at the foot of the steps and looked around.

Thirty-Fifth Street suddenly seemed darker, colder, more threatening. The

brownstones all looked somehow secret, as if hiding mysteries best not

investigated. Their windows looked like eyes.

Somewhere, behind one of those windows, there may be a man or

woman contemplating murder, I thought. A shudder worked up my spine.

Contemplating it or doing it.

Then, suddenly, the door was open and Stevens was there.

I felt an intense surge of relief. I am not an overly imaginative man, I

think-at least not under ordinary circumstances-but this last thought had had

all the eerie clarity of prophecy. I might have babbled aloud if I hadn't

glanced at Stevens's eyes first. His eyes did not know me. His eyes did not

know me at all.

Then there was another instance of that eerie, prophetic clarity; I saw the

rest of my evening in perfect detail. Three hours in a quiet bar. Three

martinis (perhaps four) to dull the embarrassment of having been fool

enough to go where I wasn't wanted. The humiliation my mother's advice

had been intended to avoid-that which comes with knowing one has

overstepped.

I saw myself going home a little tipsy, but not in a good way. I saw

myself merely sitting through the cab ride rather than experiencing it

through that childlike lens of excitement and anticipation. I heard myself

saying to Ellen, It wears thin after a while Waterhouse told the same story

about winning a consignment of T-bone steaks for the 3rd Battalion in a

poker game and they play Hearts for a dollar a point, can you believe it?

go back? I suppose I might, but I doubt it. And that would be the end of it.

Except, I suppose, for my own humiliation.

I saw all of this in the nothing of Stevens's eyes. Then the eyes warmed.

He smiled slightly and said: 'Mr Adley! Come in. I'll take your coat.'

I mounted the steps and Stevens closed the door firmly behind me. How

different a door can feel when you are on the warm side of it! He took my

coat and was gone with it. I stood in the hall for a moment, looking at my

own reflection in the pier glass, a man of sixty-three whose face was rapidly

becoming too gaunt to look middle-aged. And yet the reflection pleased me.

I slipped into the library.

Johanssen was there, reading his Wall Street Journal. In another island of

light, Emlyn McCarron sat over a chessboard opposite Peter Andrews.

McCarron was and is a cadaverous man, possessed of a narrow, bladelike

nose; Andrews was huge, slope-shouldered, and choleric. A vast ginger-

coloured beard sprayed over his vest.

Face to face over the inlaid board with its carved pieces of ivory and

ebony, they looked like Indian totems: eagle and bear.

Waterhouse was there, frowning over that day's Times. He glanced up,

nodded at me without surprise, and disappeared into the paper again.

Stevens brought me a Bombay martini, unasked.

I took it into the stacks and found that puzzling, enticing set of green

volumes again. I began reading the works of Edward Gray Seville that

night. I started at the beginning, with These Were Our Brothers. Since then I

have read them all, and believe them to be eleven of the finest novels of our

century.

Near the end of the evening there was a story -just one -and Stevens

brought brandy around. When the tale was told, people began to rise,

preparing to leave. Stevens spoke from the double doorway which

communicated with the hallway. His voice was low and pleasant, but

carrying: 'Who will bring us a tale for Christmas, then?'

People stopped what they were doing and glanced around. There was

some low, goodnatured talk and a burst of laughter.

Stevens, smiling but serious, clapped his hands together twice, like a

grammar school teacher calling an unruly class to order. 'Come, gentlemen-

who'll bring the tale?' Peter Andrews, he of the sloped shoulders and

gingery beard, cleared his throat. 'I have something I've been thinking about

I don't know if it's quite right; that is, if it's

'That will be fine,' Stevens interrupted, and there was more laughter.

Andrews had his back slapped good naturedly. Cold draughts swirled up the

hallway as men slipped out. Then Stevens was there, as if by benign magic,

holding my coat for me. 'Good evening, Mr Adley. Always a pleasure.'

'Do you really meet on Christmas night?' I asked, buttoning my coat I

was a little disappointed that I was going to miss Andrews's story, but we

had made firm plans to drive to Schenectady and keep the holiday with

Ellen's sister.

Stevens managed to look both shocked and amused at the same time. 'In

no case,' he said. 'Christmas is a night a man should spend with his family.

That night, if no other. Don't you agree, sir?'

'I certainly do.'

'We always meet on the Thursday before Christmas. In fact, that is the

one night of the year when we're assured a large turnout.'

He hadn't used the word members, I noticed-just happenstance or neat

avoidance? 'Many tales have been spun out in the main room, Mr Adley,

tales of every sort, from the comic to the tragic to the ironic to the

sentimental. But on the Thursday before Christmas, it's always a tale of the

uncanny. It's always been that way, at least as far back as I can remember.'

That at least explained the comment I had heard on my first visit, the one

to the effect that Norman Stett should have saved his story for Christmas.

Other questions hovered on my lips, but I saw a reflected caution in

Stevens's eyes. Do you catch my drift? It was not a warning that he would

not answer my questions; it was, rather, a warning that I should not even

ask them.

'Was there something else, Mr Adley?'

We were alone in the hall now. All the others had left And suddenly the

hallway seemed darker, Stevens's long face paler, his lips redder. A knot

exploded in the fireplace and a red glow washed momentarily across the

polished parquet floor. I thought I heard, from somewhere in those as-yet-

unexplored rooms beyond, a kind of slithery bump. I did not like the sound.

Not at all.

'No,' I said in a voice that was not quite steady. 'I think not.'

'Goodnight, then,' Stevens said, and I crossed the threshold. I heard the

heavy door close behind me. I heard the lock turn. And then I was walking

towards the lights of 2nd Avenue, not looking back over my shoulder,

somehow afraid to look back, as if I might see some frightful fiend

matching me stride for stride, or glimpse some secret better kept than

known. I reached the corner, saw an empty cab, and flagged it. 'More war

stories?' Ellen asked me that night She was in bed with Philip Marlowe, the

only lover she has ever taken.

"There was a war story or two,' I said, hanging up my overcoat. 'Mostly I

sat and read a book.'

'When you weren't oinking.'

'Yes, that's right. When I wasn't oinking.'

'Listen to this: "The first time I ever laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was

drunk in a Rolls-Royce Stiver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers,"'

Ellen read.' "He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You

could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he

looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been

spending too much money in a place that exists for that purpose and for no

other." Nice, huh? It's -'

'The Long Goodbye' I said, taking off my shoes. 'You read me that same

passage once every three years. It's part of your life-cycle.'

She wrinkled her nose at me. 'Oink-oink.'

'Thank you,' I said.

She went back to her book. I went out into the kitchen to get a bottle of

Beck's. When I came back, she had laid The Long Goodbye open on the

counterpane and was looking at me closely. 'David, are you going to join

this club?'

'I suppose I might if I'm asked.' I felt uncomfortable. I had perhaps told

her another lie. If there was such a thing as membership at 249 East 35 th, I

already was a member. 'I'm glad,' she said. 'You've needed something for a

long time now. I don't think you even know it, but you have. I've got the

Relief Committee and the Commission on Women's Rights and the Theatre

Society. But you've needed something. Some people to grow old with, I

think.'

I went to the bed and sat beside her and picked up The Long Goodbye. It

was a bright, new-minted paperback. I could remember buying the original

hardback edition as a birthday present for Ellen. In 1953. 'Are we old?' I

asked her.

'I suspect we are,' she said, and smiled brilliantly at me.

I put the book down and touched her breast. 'Too old for this?'

She turned the covers back with ladylike decorum and then, giggling,

kicked them onto the floor with her feet. 'Beat me, daddy,' Ellen said, 'eight

to the bar.'

'Oink, oink,' I said, and then we were both laughing.

The Thursday before Christmas came. That evening was much the same

as the others, with two notable exceptions. There were more people there,

perhaps as many as eighteen.

And there was a sharp, indefinable sense of excitement in the air.

Johansson took only a cursory glance at his Journal and then joined

McCarron, Hugh Beagleman, and myself.

We sat near the windows, talking of this and that, and finally fell into a

passionate-and often hilarious-discussion of pre-war automobiles.

There was, now that I think of it, a third difference as well-Stevens had

concocted a delicious eggnog punch. It was smooth, but it was also hot with

rum and spices. It was served from an incredible Waterford bowl that

looked like an ice-sculpture, and the animated hum of the conversation

grew ever higher as the level of the punch grew lower.

I looked over in the corner by the tiny door leading to the billiard room

and was astounded to see Waterhouse and Norman Stett flipping baseball

cards into what looked like a genuine beaver tophat. They were laughing

uproariously.

Groups formed and re-formed. The hour grew late and then, at the time

when people usually began slipping out through the front door, I saw Peter

Andrews seated in front of the fire with an unmarked packet, about the size

of a seed envelope, in one hand. He tossed it into the flames without

opening it, and a moment later the fire began to dance with every colour of

the spectrum-and some, I would have sworn, from outside it-before turning

yellow again. Chairs were dragged around. Over Andrews's shoulder I

could see the keystone with its etched homily: IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE

WHO TELLS IT.

Stevens passed unobtrusively among us, taking punch glasses and

replacing them with snifters of brandy. There were murmurs of 'Merry

Christmas' and 'Top of the season, Stevens,' and for the first time I saw

money change hands-a ten dollar bill was unobtrusively tendered here, a

bill that looked like a fifty there, one which I clearly saw was a hundred

from another chair.

"Thank you, Mr McCarron Mr Johansson Mr Beagleman' A quiet,

well-bred murmur.

I have lived in New York long enough to know that the Christmas season

is a carnival of tips; something for the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-

maker-not to mention the doorman, the super, and the cleaning lady who

comes in Tuesdays and Fridays. I've never met anyone of my own class

who regarded this as anything but a necessary nuisance but I felt none of

that grudging spirit on that night. The money was given willingly, even

eagerly and suddenly, for no reason (it was the way thoughts often seemed

to come when one was at 249), I thought of the boy calling up to Scrooge

on the still, cold air of a London Christmas morning: 'Wot? The goose that's

as big as me?' And Scrooge, nearly crazed with joy, giggling 'A good boy!

An excellent boy!'

I found my own wallet. In the back of this, behind the pictures of Ellen I

keep, there has always been a fifty dollar bill which I keep for emergencies.

When Stevens gave me my brandy, I slipped it into his hand with never a

qualm although I was not a rich man. 'Happy Christmas, Stevens,' I said.

'Thank you, sir. And the same to you.'

He finished passing out the brandies and collecting his honorariums and

retired. I glanced around once, at the midpoint of Peter Andrews's story, and

saw him standing by the double doors, a dim manlike shadow, still and

silent.

'I'm a lawyer now, as most of you know,' Andrews said after sipping at

his glass, clearing his throat, and then sipping again. 'I've had offices on

Park Avenue for the last twenty-two years. But before that, I was a legal

assistant in a firm of lawyers which did business in Washington, DC. One

night in July I was required to stay late in order to finish indexing case

citations in a brief which hasn't anything at all to do with this story. But

then a man came in- a man who was at that time one of the most widely

known Senators on the Hill, a man who later almost became President. His

shirt was matted with blood and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.

'"I've got to talk to Joe," he said. Joe, you understand, was Joseph Woods,

the head of my firm, one of the most influential private-sector lawyers in

Washington, and this Senator's close personal friend.

'"He went home hours ago," I said. I was terribly frightened, I can tell

you-he looked like a man who had just walked away from a dreadful car

accident, or perhaps from a knife-fight And somehow seeing his face which

I had seen in newspaper photos and on Meet the Press-seeing it streaked

with gore, one cheek twitching spasmodically below one wild eye all of

that made my fright worse. "I can call him if you -" I was already fumbling

with the phone, mad with eagerness to turn this unexpected responsibility

over to someone else. Looking behind him, I could see the caked and

bloody footprints he had left on the carpet ' "I've got to talk to Joe right

now," he reiterated as if he hadn't heard me.' "There's something in the trunk

of my car something I found out at the Virginia place. I've shot it and

stabbed it and I can't kill it. It's not human, and I can't kill it" 'He began to

giggle and then to laugh and finally to scream. And he was still

screaming when I finally got Mr Woods on the phone and told him to come,

for God's sake, to come as fast as he could '

It is not my purpose to tell Peter Andrews's story, either. As a matter of

fact, I am not sure I would dare to tell it. Suffice it to say that it was a tale

so gruesome that I dreamed of it for weeks afterwards, and Ellen once

looked at me over the breakfast table and asked me why I had suddenly

cried out 'His head! His head is still speaking in the earth!' in the middle of

the night 'I suppose it was a dream,' I said. 'One of those you can't

remember afterwards.' But my eyes dropped immediately to my coffee cup,

and I think that Ellen knew the lie that time.

One day in August of the following year, I was buzzed as I worked in the

Readers Library. It was George Waterhouse. He asked me if I could step up

to his office. When I got there I saw that Robert Garden was also there, and

Henry Effingham. For one moment I was positive I was about to be accused

of some really dreadful act of stupidity or malfeasance.

Then Garden stepped around to me and said: 'George believes the time

has come to make you a junior partner, David. The rest of us agree.'

'It's going to be a little bit like being the world's oldest JayCee,'

Effingham said with a grin, 'but it's the channel you have to go through,

David. With any luck, we can make you a full partner by Christmas.'

There were no bad dreams that night. Ellen and I went out to dinner,

drank too much, went on to a jazz place where we hadn't been in nearly six

years, and listened to that amazing blue-eyed black man, Dexter Gordon,

blow his horn until almost two in the morning. We woke up the next

morning with fluttery stomachs and achey heads, both of us still unable to

completely believe what had happened. One of them was that my salary had

just climbed by eight thousand dollars a year long after our expectations of

such a staggering income jump had fallen by the wayside.

The firm sent me to Copenhagen for six weeks that fall, and I returned to

discover that John Hanrahan, one of the regular attendees at 249, had died

of cancer. A collection was taken up for his wife, who had been left in

unpleasant circumstances. I was pressed into service to total the amount-

which was given entirely in cash-and convert it to a cashier's check. It came

to almost ten thousand dollars. I turned the check over to Stevens and I

suppose he mailed it.

It just so happened that Arlene Hanrahan was a member of Ellen's

Theatre Society, and Ellen told me some time later that Arlene had received

an anonymous check for ten thousand four hundred dollars. Written on the

check stub was the brief and unilluminating message 'Friends of your late

husband John'.

'Isn't that the most amazing thing you ever heard in your life?' Ellen

asked me.

'No,' I said, 'but it's right up there in the top ten. Are there any more

strawberries, Ellen?'

The years went by. I discovered a warren of rooms upstairs at 249-a

writing room, a bedroom where guests sometimes stayed overnight

(although after that slithery bump I had heard-or imagined I had heard- I

believe I personally would rather have registered at a good hotel), a small

but well-equipped gymnasium, and a sauna bath. There was also a long,

narrow room which ran the length of the building and contained two

bowling alleys.

In those same years I re-read the novels of Edward Gray Seville, and

discovered an absolutely stunning poet-the equal of Ezra Pound and

Wallace Stevens, perhaps-named Norbert Rosen. According to the back flap

on one of the three volumes of his work in the stacks, he had been born in

1924 and killed at Anzio. All three volumes of his work had been published

by Stedham & Son, New York and Boston.

I remember going back to the New York Public Library on a bright spring

afternoon during one of those years (of which year I am no longer sure) and

requesting twenty years' worth of Literary Market Place. The LMP is an

annual publication the size of a large city's Yellow Pages, and the reference

room librarian was quite put out with me, I'm afraid. But I persisted, and

went through each volume carefully. And although LMP is supposed to list

every publisher, great and small, in the United States (in addition to agents,

editors, and book club staffs), I found no listing for Stedham & Son. A year

later-or perhaps it was two years later- I fell into conversation with an

antiquarian book dealer and asked him about the imprint. He said he had

never heard of it.

I thought of asking Stevens-saw that warning light in his eyes-and

dropped the question unasked.

And, over those years, there were stories. Tales, to use Stevens's word.

Funny tales, tales of love found and love lost, tales of unease. Yes, and even

a few war stories, although none of the sort Ellen had likely been thinking

of when she made the suggestion.

I remember Gerard Tozeman's story the most clearly-the tale of an

American base of operations which took a direct hit from German artillery

four months before the end of World War I, killing everyone present except

for Tozeman himself.

Lathrop Carruthers, the American general who everyone had by then

decided must be utterly insane (he had been responsible for better than

eighteen thousand casualties by then-lives and limbs spent as casually as

you or I might spend a quarter in a jukebox), was standing at a map of the

front lines when the shell struck. He had been explaining yet another mad

flanking operation at that moment-an operation which would have

succeeded only on the level of all the others Carruthers had hatched: it

would be wonderfully successful at making new widows.

And when the dust cleared, Gerard Tozeman, dazed and deaf, bleeding

from his nose, his ears, and the corners of both eyes, his testicles already

swelling from the force of the concussion, had come upon Carruthers's body

while looking for a way out of the abbatoir that had been the staff HQ only

minutes before. He looked at the general's body and then began to scream

and laugh. The sounds went unheard by his own shellshocked ears, but they

served to notify the medicos that someone was still alive in that strew of

matchwood.

Carruthers had not been mutilated by the blast at least, Tozeman said, it

hadn't been what the soldiers of that long-ago war had come to think of as

mutilation-men whose arms had been blown off, men with no feet, no eyes;

men whose lungs

had been shrivelled by gas. No, he said, it was nothing like that The

man's mother would have known him at once. But the map

 the map before which Carruthers had been standing with his butcher's

pointer when the shell struck

It had somehow been driven into his face. Tozeman had found himself

staring into a hideous, tattooed deathmask. Here was the stony shore of

Brittany on the bony ridge of Lathrop Carruthers's brow. Here was the

Rhine flowing like a blue scar down his left cheek. Here were some or the

finest wine-growing provinces in the world bumped and ridged over his

chin. Here was the Saar drawn around his throat like a hangman's noose

and printed across one bulging eyeball was the word VERSAILLES.

That was our Christmas story in the year 197-.

I remember many others, but they do not belong here. Properly speaking,

Tozeman's doesn't, either but it was the first 'Christmas tale' I heard at 249,

and I could not resist telling it. And then, on the Thursday after

Thanksgiving of this year, when Stevens clapped his hands together for

attention and asked who would favour us with a Christmas tale, Emlyn

McCarron growled: 'I suppose I've got something that bears telling. Tell it

now or tell it never; God'll shut me up for good soon enough.'

In the years I had been coming to 249, I had never heard McCarron tell a

story. And perhaps that's why I called the taxi so early, and why, when

Stevens passed out eggnog to the six of us who had ventured out on that

bellowing, frigid night, I felt so keenly excited. Nor was I the only one; I

saw that same excitement on a good many other faces. McCarron, old and

dry and leathery, sat in the huge chair by the fire with the packet of powder

in his gnarled hands. He tossed it in, and we watched the flames shift

colours madly before returning to yellow again, Stevens passed among us

with brandy, and we passed him his Christmas honorariums. Once, during

that yearly ceremony, I heard the clink of change passing from the hand of

the giver to the hand of the receiver; on another occasion, I had seen a one

thousand dollar bill for a moment in the firelight. On both occasions the

murmur of Stevens's voice had been exactly the same: low, considerate, and

entirely correct. Ten years, more or less, had passed since I had first come

to 249 with George Waterhouse, and while much had changed in the world

outside, nothing had changed in here, and Stevens seemed not to have aged

a month, or even a single day. He moved back into the shadows, and for a

moment there was a silence so perfect that we could hear the faint whistle

of boiling sap escaping from the burning logs on the hearth. Emlyn

McCarron was looking into the fire and we all followed his gaze. The

flames seemed particularly wild that night. I felt almost hypnotized by the

sight of the fire-as, I suppose, the cavemen who binned us were once

hypnotized by it as the wind walked and talked outside their cold northern

caves.

At last, still looking into the fire, bent slightly forward so that his

forearms rested on his thighs and his clasped hands hung in a knot between

his knees, McCarron began to speak.

2: The Breathing Method

I am nearly eighty now, which means that I was born with the century.

All my life I have been associated with a building which stands almost

directly across from Madison Square Garden; this building, which looks

like a great grey prison -something out of A Tale of Two Cities-is actually a

hospital, as most of you know. It

is Harriet White Memorial Hospital. The Harriet White after whom it

was named was my father's first wife, and she got her practical experience

in nursing when there were still actual sheep grazing on the Sheep's

Meadow in Central Park. A statue of the lady herself (who would have been

my stepmother, had she still been alive when I was born) stands on a

pedestal in a pavillion before the building, and if any of you have seen it,

you may have wondered how a woman with such a stern and

uncompromising face could have found such a gentle occupation. The

motto chiselled into the statue's base, once you get rid of the Latin folderol,

is even less comforting: There is no comfort without pain; thus we define

salvation through suffering. Cato, if you please or if you don't please! I

was born inside that grey stone building on 20 March, 1900. I returned there

as an intern in the year 1926. Twenty-six is old to be just starting out in the

world of medicine, but I had done a more practical internship in France, at

the end of World War I, trying to pack ruptured guts back into stomachs that

had been blown wide open and dealing on the black market for morphine

which was often tinctured and sometimes dangerous. As with the generation

of physicians following World War II, we were a bedrock-practical lot of

sawbones, and the records of the major medical schools show a remarkably

small number of washouts in the years 1919 to 1928. We were older, more

experienced, steadier. Were we also wiser? I don't know but we were

certainly more cynical. There was none of this nonsense you read about in

the popular medical novels, stuff about fainting or vomiting at one's first

autopsy. Not after Belleau Wood, where mamma rats sometimes raised

whole litters of ratlings in the gas-exploded intestines of the soldiers left to

rot in no-man's land. We had gotten all our puking and passing out behind

us.

The Harriet White Memorial Hospital also figured largely in something

that happened to me nine years after I had interned there-and this is the

story I want to tell you gentlemen tonight. It is not a tale to be told at

Christmas, you would say (although its final scene was played out on

Christmas Eve), and yet, while it is certainly horrible, it also seems to

express to me all the amazing power of our cursed, doomed species. In it I

see the wonder of our will and also its horrible, tenebrous power.

Birth itself, gentlemen, is a horrid thing to many; it is the fashion now

that fathers should be present at the birth of their children, and while this

fashion has served to indict many men with a guilt which I feel they may

not deserve (it is a guilt which some women use knowingly and with an

almost prescient cruelty), it seems by and large to be a healthful, salubrious

thing. Yet I have seen men leave the delivery room white and tottering and I

have seen them swoon like girls, overcome by the cries and the blood. I

remember one father who held up just fine only to begin screaming

hysterically as his perfectly healthy son pushed its way into the world. The

infant's eyes were open, it gave the impression of looking around and then

its eyes settled on the father. Birth is wonderful, gentlemen, but I have

never found it beautiful-not by any stretch of the imagination. I believe it is

too brutal to be beautiful. A woman's womb is like an engine. With

conception, that engine is turned on. At first it barely idles but as the

creative cycle nears the climax of birth, that engine revs up and up and up.

Its idling whisper becomes a steady running hum, and then a rumble, and

finally a bellowing, frightening roar. Once that silent engine has been turned

on, every mother-to-be understands that her life is in check. Either she will

bring the baby forth and the engine will shut down again, or that engine will

pound louder and harder and faster until it explodes, killing her in blood

and pain.

This is a story of birth, gentlemen, on the eve of that birth we have

celebrated for almost two thousand years.

I began practising medicine in 1929-a bad year to begin anything. My

grandfather was able to loan me a small sum of money, so I was luckier

than many of my colleagues, but I still had to survive over the next four

years mostly on my wits.

By 1935, things had improved a bit. I had developed a bedrock of steady

patients and was getting quite a few outpatient referrals from White

Memorial. In April of that year I saw a new patient, a young woman whom

I will call Sandra Stansfield-that name is close enough to what her name

really was. This was a young woman, white, who stated her age to be

twenty-eight. After examining her, I guessed her true age to be between

three and five years younger than that. She was blonde, slender, and tall for

that time-about five feet eight inches. She was quite beautiful, but in an

austere way that was almost forbidding. Her features were clear and regular,

her eyes intelligent and her mouth every bit as determined as the stone

mouth of Harriet White on the statue in the pavilion across from Madison

Square Garden. The name she put on her form was not Sandra Stansfield

but Jane Smith. My examination subsequently showed her to be about two

months gone in pregnancy. She wore no wedding ring. After the

preliminary exam-but before the results of the pregnancy test were in, my

nurse, Ella Davidson, said: "That girl yesterday? Jane Smith? If that isn't an

assumed name, I never heard one.'

I agreed. Still, I rather admired her. She had not engaged in the usual

shillyshallying, toe-scuffing, blushing, tearful behaviour. She had been

straightforward and businesslike.

Even her alias had seemed more a matter of business than of shame.

There had been no attempt to provide verisimilitude by creating a 'Betty

Rucklehouse' or whomping up a 'Ternina DeVille'. You require a name for

your form, she seemed to be saying, because that is the law. So here is a

name; but rather than trusting to the professional ethics of a man I don't

know, I'll trust in myself. If you don't mind, Ella sniffed and passed a few

remarks-'modern girls' and 'bold as brass'-but she was a good woman, and I

don't think she said those things except for the sake of form. She knew as

well as I did that, whatever my new patient might be, she was no little

trollop with hard eyes and round heels. No; 'Jane Smith' was merely an

extremely serious, extremely determined young woman-if either of those

things can be described by such a milquetoast adverb as 'merely'. It was an

unpleasant situation (it used to be called 'getting in a scrape', as you

gentlemen may remember; nowadays it seems that many young women use

a scrape to get out of the scrape), and she meant to go through it with

whatever grace and dignity she could manage.

A week after her initial appointment, she came in again. That was a peach

of a day-one of the first real days of spring. The air was mild, the sky a soft,

milky shade of blue, and there was a smell on the breeze- a warm,

indefinable smell that seems to be nature's signal that she is entering her

own birth cycle again. The sort of day when you wish you were miles from

any responsibility, sitting opposite a lovely woman of your own-at Coney

Island, maybe, or on the Palisades across the Hudson with a picnic hamper

on a checkered cloth and the lady in question wearing a great white

cartwheel hat and a sleeveless gown as pretty as the day.

'Jane Smith's' dress had sleeves, but it was still almost as pretty as the

day; a smart white linen with brown edging. She wore brown pumps, white

gloves, and a cloche hat that was slightly out of fashion-it was the first sign

I saw that she was a far from rich woman.

'You're pregnant,' I said. 'I don't believe you doubted it much, did you?'

If there are to be tears, I thought, they will come now.

'No,' she said with perfect composure. There was no more a sign of tears

in her eyes than there were rainclouds on the horizon that day. 'I'm very

regular as a rule.'

There was a pause between us.

'When may I expect to deliver?' she asked then, with an almost soundless

sigh. It was the sound a man or woman might make before bending over to

pick up a heavy load.

'It will be a Christmas baby,' I said. '10 December is the date I'l1 give

you, but it could be two weeks on either side of that'

'All right.' She hesitated briefly, and then plunged ahead. 'Will you attend

me? Even though I'm not married?'

'Yes,' I said. 'On one condition.'

She frowned, and in that moment her face was more like the face of

Harriet White, my father's first wife, than ever. One would not think that the

frown of a woman perhaps only twenty-three could be particularly

formidable, but this one was. She was ready to leave, and the fact that she

would have to go through this entire embarrassing process again with

another doctor was not going to deter her.

'And what might that be?' she asked with perfect, colourless courtesy.

Now it was I who felt an urge to drop my eyes from her steady hazel

ones, but I held her gaze. 'I insist upon knowing your real name. We can

continue to do business on a cash basis if that is how you prefer it, and I can

continue to have Mrs Davidson issue you receipts in the name of Jane

Smith. But if we are going to travel through the next seven months or so

together, I would like to be able to address you by the name to which you

answer in all the rest of your life.'

I finished this absurdly stiff little speech and watched her think it

through. I was somehow quite sure she was going to stand up, thank me for

my time, and leave forever. I was going to feel disappointed if that

happened. I liked her. Even more, I liked the straightforward way she was

handling a problem which would have reduced ninety women out of a

hundred to inept and undignified liars, terrified by the living clock within

and so deeply ashamed of their situation that to make any reasonable plan

for coping with it became impossible.

I suppose many young people today would find such a state of mind

ludicrous, ugly, even hard to believe. People have become so eager to

demonstrate their broad-mindedness that a pregnant woman who has no

wedding ring is apt to be treated with twice the solicitude of one who does.

You gentlemen will well remember when rectitude and hypocrisy were

combined to make a situation that was viciously difficult for a woman who

had gotten herself 'in a scrape'. In those days, a married pregnant woman

was a radiant woman, sure of her position and proud of fulfilling what she

considered to be the function God put her on earth for. An unmarried

pregnant woman was a trollop in the eyes of the world and apt to be a

trollop in her own eyes as well. They were, to use Ella Davidson's word,

'easy', and in that world and that time, easiness was not quickly forgiven.

Such women crept away to have their babies in other towns or cities. Some

took pills or jumped from buildings. Others went to butcher abortionists

with dirty hands or tried to do the job themselves; in my time as a physician

I have seen four women die of blood-loss before my eyes as the result of

punctured wombs-in one case the puncturing was done by the jagged neck

of a Dr Pepper bottle that had been tied to the handle of a whisk-broom. It is

hard to believe now that such things happened, but they did, gentlemen.

They did. It was, quite simply, the worst situation a healthy young woman

could find herself in.

'All right' she said at last. 'That's fair enough. My name is Sandra

Stansfield.' And she held her hand out. Rather amazed, I took it and shook

it. I'm rather glad Ella

Davidson didn't see me do that. She would have made no comment, but

the coffee would have been bitter for the next week.

She smiled-at my own expression of bemusement, I imagine-and looked

at me frankly.

'I hope we can be friends, Dr McCarron. I need a friend just now. I'm

quite frightened.'

'I can understand that, and I'll try to be your friend if I can, Miss

Stansfield. Is there anything I can do for you now?'

She opened her handbag and took out a dime-store pad and a pen. She

opened the pad, poised the pen, and looked up at me. For one horrified

instant I believed she was going to ask me for the name and address of an

abortionist. Then she said: 'I'd like to know the best things to eat. For the

baby, I mean.'

I laughed out loud. She looked at me with some amazement.

'Forgive me-it's just that you seem so businesslike.'

'I suppose,' she said. 'This baby is part of my business now, isn't it, Dr

McCarron?'

'Yes. Of course it is. And I have a folder which I give to all my pregnant

patients. It deals with diet and weight and drinking and smoking and lots of

other things. Please don't laugh when you look at it. You'll hurt my feelings

if you do, because I wrote it myself.'

And so I had-although it was really more of a pamphlet than a folder, and

in time became my book, A Practical Guide to Pregnancy and Delivery. I

was quite interested in obstetrics and gynaecology in those days-still am -

although it was not a thing to specialize in back then unless you had plenty

of uptown connections. Even if you did, it might take ten or fifteen years to

establish a strong practice. Having hung out my shingle at a rather too-ripe

age as a result of the war, I didn't feel I had the time to spare. I contented

myself with the knowledge that I would see a great many happy expectant

mothers and deliver a great many babies in the course of my general

practice. And so I did; at last count I had delivered well over two thousand

babies -enough to fill two hundred classrooms.

I kept up with the literature on having babies more smartly than I did on

that applying to any other area of general practice. And because my

opinions were strong, enthusiastic ones, I wrote my own pamphlet rather

than just passing along the stale chestnuts so often foisted on young

mothers then. I won't run through the whole catalogue of these chestnuts-

we'd be here all night-but I'll mention a couple.

Expectant mothers were urged to stay off their feet as much as possible,

and on no account were they to walk any sustained distance lest a

miscarriage or 'birth damage' result. Now giving birth is an extremely

strenuous piece of work, and such advice is like telling a football player to

prepare for the big game by sitting around as much as possible so he won't

tire himself out! Another sterling piece of advice, given by a good many

doctors, was that moderately overweight mothers-to-be take up smoking

smoking! The rationale was perfectly expressed by an advertising slogan of

the day: 'Have a Lucky instead of a sweet.' People who have the idea that

when we entered the twentieth century we also entered an age of medical

light and reason have no idea of how utterly crazy medicine could

sometimes be. Perhaps it's just as well; their hair would turn white.

I gave Miss Stansfield my folder and she looked through it with complete

attention for perhaps five minutes. I asked her permission to smoke my pipe

and she gave it absently, without looking up. When she did look up at last,

there was a small smile on her lips. 'Are you a radical, Dr McCarron?' she

asked.

'Why do you say that? Because I advise that the expectant mother should

walk her round of errands instead of riding in a smoky, jolting subway car?'

' "Pre-natal vitamins," whatever they are swimming recommended and

breathing exercises! What breathing exercises?'

'That comes later on, and no-I'm not a radical. Far from it What I am is

five minutes overdue on my next patient.'

'Oh! I'm sorry.' She got to her feet quickly, tucking the thick folder into

her

purse.

'No need.'

She shrugged into her light coat, looking at me with those direct hazel

eyes as she did so.

'No,' she said. 'Not a radical at all. I suspect you're actually quite

comfortable? Is that the word I want?'

'I hope it will serve,' I said. 'It's a word I like. If you speak to Mrs

Davidson, shell give you an appointment schedule. I'll want to see you

again early next month.'

'Your Mrs Davidson doesn't approve of me.'

'Oh, I'm sure that's not true at all.' But I've never been a particularly good

liar, and the warmth between us suddenly slipped away. I did not

accompany her to the door of my consulting room. 'Miss Stansfield?' She

turned towards me, coolly enquiring. 'Do you intend to keep the baby?'

She considered me briefly and then smiled- a secret smile which I am

convinced only pregnant women know. 'Oh yes,' she said, and let herself

out. By the end of that day I had treated identical twins for identical cases

of poison ivy, lanced a boil, removed a hook of metal from a sheet-welder's

eye, and had referred one of my oldest patients to White Memorial for what

was surely cancer. I had forgotten all about Sandra Stansfield by then. Ella

Davidson recalled her to my mind by saying: 'Perhaps she's not a chippie

after all.'

I looked up from my last patient's folder. I had been looking at it, feeling

that useless disgust most doctors feel when they know they have been

rendered completely helpless, and thinking I ought to have a rubber stamp

made up for such files-only instead of saying ACCOUNT RECEIVABLE or

PAID IN FULL or PATIENT MOVED, it would simply say DEATH-

WARRANT. Perhaps with a skull and crossbones above, like those on

bottles of poison. 'Pardon me?'

'Your Miss Jane Smith. She did a most peculiar thing after her

appointment this morning.' The set of Mrs Davidson's head and mouth

made it clear that this was the sort of peculiar thing of which she approved.

'And what was that?'

'When I gave her her appointment card, she asked me to tot up her

expenses. All of her expenses. Delivery and hospital stay included.'

That was a peculiar thing, all right. This was 1935, remember, and Miss

Stansfield gave every impression of being a woman on her own. Was she

well off, even comfortably off? I didn't think so. Her dress, shoes, and

gloves had all been smart, but she had worn no jewellery -not even costume

jewellery. And then there was her hat, that decidedly out-of-date cloche.

'Did you do it?' I asked.

Mrs Davidson looked at me as though I might have lost my senses. 'Did

I? Of course I did! And she paid the entire amount. In cash.'

The last, which apparently had surprised Mrs Davidson the most (in an

extremely pleasant way, of course), surprised me not at all. One thing which

the Jane Smiths of the world can't do is write cheques.

Took a bank-book out of her purse, opened it, and counted the money

right out onto my desk,' Mrs Davidson was continuing. Then she put her

receipt in where the

cash had been, put the bank-book into her purse again, and said good day.

Not half bad, when you think of the way we've had to chase some of these

so-called "respectable" people to make them pay their bills!'

I felt chagrined for some reason. I was not happy with the Stansfield

woman for having done such a thing, with Mrs Davidson for being so

pleased and complacent with the arrangement, and with myself, for some

reason I couldn't define then and can't now. Something about it made me

feel small. 'But she couldn't very well pay for a hospital stay now, could

she?' I asked-it was a ridiculously small thing to seize on, but it was all I

could find at that moment on which to express my pique and half-amused

frustration. 'After all, none of us know how long shell have to remain there.

Or are you reading the crystal now, Ella?'

'I told her that very thing, and she asked what the average stay was

following an uncomplicated birth. I told her three days. Wasn't that right, Dr

McCarron?'

I had to admit it was.

'She said that she would pay for three days, then, and if it was longer, she

would pay the difference, and if-'

'- if it was shorter, we could issue her a refund,' I finished wearily. I

thought: Damn the woman, anyway!-and then I laughed. She had guts. One

couldn't deny that. All kinds of guts.

Mrs Davidson allowed herself a smile and if I am ever tempted, now

that I am in my dotage, to believe I know all there is to know about one of

my fellow creatures, I try to remember that smile. Before that day I would

have staked my iife that I would never see Mrs Davidson, one of the most

'proper' women I have ever known, smile fondly as she thought about a girl

who was pregnant out of wedlock.

'Guts? I don't know, Doctor. But she knows her own mind, that one. She

certainly does.'

A month passed, and Miss Stansfield showed up promptly for her

appointment, simply appearing out of that wide, amazing flow of humanity

that was New York then and is New York now. She wore a fresh-looking

blue dress to which she managed to communicate a feeling of originality, of

one-of-a-kind-ness, despite the fact that it had been quite obviously picked

from a rack of dozens just like it. Her pumps did not match it; they were the

same brown ones in which I had seen her last time.

I checked her over carefully and found her normal in every way. I told

her so and she was pleased. 'I found the pre-natal vitamins, Dr McCarron.'

'Did you? That's good.'

Her eyes sparkled impishly. "The druggist advised me against them.'

'God save me from pestle-pounders,' I said, and she giggled against the

heel of her palm-it was a childlike gesture, winning in its

unselfconsciousness. 'I never met a druggist that wasn't a frustrated doctor.

And a Republican. Pre-natal vitamins are new, so they're regarded with

suspicion. Did you take his advice?'

'No, I took yours. You're my doctor.'

Thank you.'

'Not at all.' She looked at me straightforwardly, not giggling now. 'Dr

McCarron, when will I begin to show?'

'Not until August, I should guess. September, if you choose garments

which are uh, voluminous.'

Thank you.' She picked up her purse but did not rise immediately to go. I

thought that she wanted to talk and didn't know where or how to begin.

'You're a working woman, I take it?'

She nodded. 'Yes. I work.'

'Might I ask where? If you'd rather I didn't -'

She laughed- a brittle, humourless laugh, as different from that giggle as

day is from dark. 'In a department store. Where else does an unmarried

woman work in the city? I sell perfume to fat ladies who rinse their hair and

then have it done up in tiny finger-waves.'

'How long will you continue?'

'Until my delicate condition is noticed. I suppose then I'll be asked to

leave, lest I upset any of the fat ladies. The shock of being waited on by a

pregnant woman with no wedding-band might cause their hair to straighten.'

Quite suddenly her eyes were bright with tears. Her lips began to

tremble, and I groped for a handkerchief. But the tears didn't fall-not so

much as a single one. Her eyes brimmed for a moment and then she blinked

them back. Her lips tightened and then smoothed out. She simply decided

she was not going to lose control of her emotions and she did not. It was a

remarkable thing to watch.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You've been very kind to me. I won't repay your

kindness with what would be a very common story.'

She rose to go, and I rose with her.

'I'm not a bad listener,' I said, 'and I have some time. My next patient

cancelled.'

'No,' she said. 'Thank you, but no.'

'All right,' I said. 'But there's something else.'

'Yes?'

'It's not my policy to make my patients-any of my patients-pay for

services in advance of those services being rendered. I hope if you that is,

if you feel you'd like to or have to' I fumbled my way into silence.

I've been in New York four years, Dr McCarron, and I'm thrifty by

nature. After August-or September-I'll have to live on what's in my savings

account until I can go back to work again. It's not a great amount and

sometimes, during the nights, mostly, I become frightened.'

She looked at me steadily with those wonderful hazel eyes.

'It seemed better to me-safer-to pay for the baby first. Ahead of

everything. Because that is where the baby is in my thoughts, and because,

later on, the temptation to spend that money might become very great'

'All right,' I said. 'But please remember that I see it as having been paid

before accounts.

If you need it, say so.'

'And bring out the dragon in Mrs Davidson again?' The impish light was

back in her eyes.

'I don't think so. And now, Doctor-'

'You intend to work as long as possible? Absolutely as long as possible?'

'Yes. I have to. Why?'

'I think I'm going to frighten you a little before you go,' I said.

Her eyes widened slightly. 'Don't do that,' she said. 'I'm frightened

enough already.'

'Which is exactly why I'm going to do it Sit down again, Miss Stansfield.'

And when she only stood there, I added: 'Please.'

She sat. Reluctantly.

'You're in a unique and unenviable position,' I told her, leaning back

against the examination table. 'You are dealing with the situation with

remarkable grace.'

She began to speak, and I held up my hand to silence her.

'That's good. I salute you for it But I would hate to see you hurt your

baby in any way out of concern for your own financial security. I had a

patient who, in spite of my strenuous advice to the contrary, continued

packing herself into a girdle month after month, strapping it tighter and

tighter as her pregnancy progressed. She was a vain, stupid, tiresome

woman, and I don't believe she really wanted the baby anyway. I don't

subscribe to many of these theories of the subconscious which everyone

seems to discuss over the Man-Jong boards these days, but if I did, I would

say that she-or some part of her-was trying to kill the baby.'

'And did she?' Her face was very still.

'No, not at all. But the baby was born retarded. It's very possible that the

baby would have been born retarded anyway, and I'm not saying otherwise-

we know next to nothing about what causes such things. But she may have

caused it.'

'I take your point,' she said in a low voice. 'You don't want me to to

pack myself in so I can work another month or six weeks. I'll admit the

thought had crossed my mind. So thank you for the fright.'

This time I walked her to the door. I would have liked to ask her just how

much-or how little-she had left in that savings book, and just how close to

the edge she was. It was a question she would not answer; I knew that well

enough. So I merely bade her goodbye and made a joke about her vitamins.

She left I found myself thinking about her at odd moments over the next

month, and-Johanssen interrupted McCarron's story at this point. They were

old friends, and I suppose that gave him the right to ask the question that

had surely crossed all our minds.

'Did you love her, Emlyn? Is that what all this is about, this stuff about

her eyes and smile and how you "thought of her at odd moments"?'

I thought that McCarron might be annoyed at this interruption, but he

was not. 'You have a right to ask the question,' he said, and paused, looking

into the fire. It seemed that he might almost have fallen into a doze. Then a

dry knot of wood exploded, sending sparks up the chimney in a swirl, and

McCarron looked around, first at Johanssen and then at the rest of us.

'No. I didn't love her. The things I've said about her sound like the things

a man who is falling in love would notice-her eyes, her dresses, her laugh.'

He lit his pipe with a special boltlike pipe-lighter that he carried, drawing

the flame until there was a bed of coals there. Then he snapped the bolt

shut, dropped it into the pocket of his jacket, and blew out a plume of

smoke that shifted slowly around his head in an aromatic membrane.

'I admired her. That was the long and short of it. And my admiration

grew with each of her visits. I suppose some of you sense this as a story of

love crossed by circumstance.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Her story came out a bit at a

time over the next half-year or so, and when you gentlemen hear it, I think

you'll agree that it was every bit as common as she herself said it was. She

had been drawn to the city like a thousand other girls; she had come from a

small town

 in Iowa or Nebraska. Or possibly it was Minnesota-I don't really

remember anymore.

She had done a lot of high school dramatics and community theatre in her

small town-good reviews in the local weekly written by a drama critic with

an English degree from Cow and Sileage Junior College-and she came to

New York to try a career in acting.

She was practical even about that-as practical as an impractical ambition

will allow one to be, anyway. She came to New York, she told me, because

she didn't believe the unstated thesis of the movie magazines-that any girl

who came to Hollywood could become a star, that she might be sipping a

soda in Schwab's Drug Store one day and playing opposite Gable or

MacMurray the next. She came to New York, she said, because she thought

it might be easier to get her foot in the door there and, I think, because the

legitimate theatre interested her more than the talkies.

She got a job selling perfume in one of the big department stores and

enrolled in acting classes. She was smart and terribly determined, this girl-

her will was pure steel, through and through-but she was as human as

anyone else. She was lonely, too. Lonely in a way that perhaps only single

girls fresh from small midwestern towns know. Homesickness is not always

a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the

way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen

blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the

way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just

indifferent but ugly perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real

sickness-the ache of the uprooted plant. Miss Stansfield, admirable as she

may have been, determined as she may have been, was not immune to it

And the rest follows so naturally it needs no telling. There was a young man

in her acting classes. The two of them went out several times. She did not

love him, but she needed a friend. By the time she discovered he was not

that and never would be, there had been two incidents. Sexual incidents.

She discovered she was pregnant. She told the young man, who told her he

would stand by her and 'do the decent thing'. A week later he was gone

from his lodgings, leaving no forwarding address. That was when she came

to me.

During her fourth month, I introduced Miss Stansfield to the Breathing

Method-what is today called the Lamaze Method. In those days, you

understand, Monsieur Lamaze was yet to be heard from.

'In those days'-the phrase has cropped up again and again, I notice. I

apologize for it but am unable to help it-so much of what I have told you

and will tell you happened as it did because it happened 'in those days'.

So 'in those days', over forty-five years ago, a visit to the delivery

rooms in any large American hospital would have sounded to you like a

visit to a madhouse. Women weeping wildly, women screaming that they

wished they were dead, women screaming that they could not bear such

agony, women screaming for Christ to forgive them their sins, women

screaming out strings of curses and gutter-words their husbands and fathers

never would have believed they knew. All of this was quite the accepted

thing, in spite of the fact that most of the world's women give birth in

almost complete silence, aside from the grunting sounds of strain that we

would associate with any piece of hard physical labour.

Doctors were responsible for some of this hysteria, I'm sorry to say. The

stories the pregnant woman heard from friends and relatives who had

already been through the birthing process also contributed to it. Believe me:

if you are told that some experience is going to hurt, it will hurt. Most pain

is in the mind, and when a woman absorbs the idea that the act of giving

birth is excruciatingly painful-when she gets this information from her

mother, her sisters, her married friends, and her physician-that woman has

been mentally prepared to feel great agony.

Even after only six years' practice, I had become used to seeing women

who were trying to cope with a twofold problem: not just the fact that they

were pregnant and must plan for the new arrival, but also the fact-what

most of them saw as a fact, anyway-that they had entered the valley of the

shadow of death. Many were actually trying to put their affairs in coherent

order so that if they should die, their husbands would be able to carry on

without them.

This is neither the time nor place for a lesson on obstetrics, but you

should know that for a long time before 'those days', the act of giving birth

was extremely dangerous in the Western countries. A revolution in medical

procedure, beginning around 1900, had made the process much safer, but an

absurdly small number of doctors bothered to tell their expectant mothers

that. God knows why. But in light of this, is it any wonder that most

delivery rooms sounded like Ward Nine in Bellevue? Here are these poor

women, their time come round at last, experiencing a process which has,

because of the almost Victorian decorum of the times, been described to

them only in the vaguest of terms; here are these women experiencing that

engine of birth finally running at full power. They were seized with an awe

and wonder which they immediately interpreted as insupportable pain, and

most of them felt that they would very shortly die a dog's death. In the

course of my reading on the subject of pregnancy, I discovered the principle

of the silent birth and the idea of the Breathing Method. Screaming wastes

energy which would be better used to expel the baby, it causes the women

to hyperventilate, and hyperventilation puts the body on an emergency

basis-adrenals running full blast, respiration and pulse-rate up-that is really

unnecessary. The Breathing Method was supposed to help the mother focus

her attention on the job at hand and to cope with pain by utilizing the body's

own resources.

It was used widely at that time in India and Africa; in America, the

Shoshone, Kiowa, and Micmac Indians all used it; the Eskimos have always

used it; but, as you may guess, most Western doctors had little interest in it.

One of my colleagues-an intelligent man -returned the typescript of my

pregnancy pamphlet to me in the fall of 1931 with a red line drawn through

the entire section on the Breathing Method. In the margin he had scribbled

that if he wanted to know about 'nigger superstitions', he would stop by a

newsstand and buy an issue of Weird Tales!

Well, I didn't cut the section from the pamphlet as he had suggested, but I

had mixed results with the method-that was the best one could say. There

were women who used it with great success. There were others who seemed

to grasp the idea perfectly in principle but who lost their discipline

completely as soon as their contractions became deep and heavy. In most of

those cases I found that the entire idea had been subverted and undermined

by well-meaning friends and relatives who had never heard of such a thing

and thus could not believe it would actually work.

The method was based on the idea that, while no two labours are ever the

same in their specifics, all are pretty much alike in general. There are four

stages: contractive labour, mid-labour, birth, and the expulsion of the

afterbirth. Contractions are a complete hardening of the abdominal and

pelvic-area muscles, and the expectant mother often finds them beginning

in the sixth month. Many women pregnant for the first time expect

something rather nasty, like bowel cramps, but I'm told it's much cleaner- a

strongly physical sensation, which may deepen into a pain like a charley

horse. A woman employing the Breathing Method began to breathe in a

series of short, measured inhales and exhales when she felt a contraction

coming on. Each breath was expelled in a puff, as if one were blowing a

trumpet Dizzy Gillespie fashion.

During mid-labour, when more painful contractions begin coming every

fifteen minutes or so, the woman switched to long inhales followed by long

exhales-it's the way a marathon runner breathes when he's starting his final

kick. The harder the contraction, the longer the inhale-exhale. In my

pamphlet, I called this stage 'riding the waves'. The final stage we need

concern ourselves with here I called 'locomotive', and Lamaze instructors

today frequently call it the 'choo-choo' stage of breathing. Final labour is

accompanied by pains which are most frequently described as deep and

glassy. They are accompanied by an irresistible urge on the mother's part to

push to expel the baby. This is the point, gentlemen, at which that

wonderful, frightening engine reaches its absolute crescendo. The cervix is

fully dilated. The baby has begun its short journey down the birth canal, and

if you were to look directly between the mother's legs, you would be apt to

see the baby's fontanell pulsing only inches from the open air. The mother

using the Breathing Method now begins to take and let out short, sharp

breaths between her lips, not filling her lungs, not hyperventilating, but

almost panting in a perfectly controlled fashion. It really is the sound

children make when they are imitating a steam-driven locomotive.

All of this has a salutary effect on the body-the mother's oxygen is kept

high without putting her systems on an emergency basis, and she herself

remains aware and alert, able to ask and answer questions, able to take

instructions. But of course the mental results of the Breathing Method were

even more important. The mother felt she was actively participating in the

birth of her child-that she was in some part guiding the process. She felt on

top of the experience and on top of the pain.

You can understand that the whole process was utterly dependent on the

patient's state of mind. The Breathing Method was uniquely vulnerable,

uniquely delicate, and if I had a good many failures, I'd explain them this

way-what a patient can be convinced of by her doctor she may be

unconvinced of by relatives who raise their hands in horror when told of

such a heathenish practice.

From this aspect, at least, Miss Stansfield was the ideal patient She had

neither friends nor relatives to talk her out of her belief in the Breathing

Method (although, in all fairness, I must add that I doubt anyone ever talked

her out of anything once she had made up her mind on the subject) once she

came to believe in it. And she did come to believe in it 'It's a little like self-

hypnosis, isn't it?' she asked me the first time we really discussed it I

agreed, delighted. 'Exactly! But you mustn't let that make you think it's a

trick, or that it will let you down when the going gets tough.'

'I don't think that at all. I'm very grateful to you. I'll practise assiduously,

Dr McCarron.'

She was the sort of woman the Breathing Method was invented for, and

when she told me she would practise, she spoke nothing but the truth. I

have never seen anyone embrace an idea with such enthusiasm but, of

course, the Breathing Method was uniquely suited to her temperament

There are docile men and women in this world by the millions, and some of

them are damn fine people. But there are others whose hands ache to hold

the throttles of their own lives, and Miss Stansfield was one of those.

When I say she embraced the Breathing Method totally, I mean it and I

think the story of her final day at the department store where she sold

perfumes and cosmetics proves the point. The end of her gainful

employment finally came late in August. Miss Stansfield was a slim young

woman in fine physical condition, and this was, of course, her first child.

Any doctor will tell you that such a woman is apt not to 'show' for five,

perhaps even six months and then, one day and all at once, everything will

show.

She came in for her monthly checkup on the first of September, laughed

ruefully, and told me she had discovered the Breathing Method had another

use.

'What's that?' I asked her.

'It's even better than counting to ten when you're mad as hell at someone,'

she said. Those hazel eyes were dancing. 'Although people look at you as if

you might be a lunatic when you start puffing and blowing.'

She told me the tale readily enough. She had gone to work as usual on

the previous Monday, and all I can think is that the curiously abrupt

transition from a slim young woman to an obviously pregnant young

woman-and the transition really can be almost as sudden as day to dark in

the tropics -had happened over the weekend. Or maybe her supervisor

finally decided that her suspicions were no longer just suspicions.

'I'll want to see you in the office on your break,' this woman, a Mrs Kelly,

said

coldly.

She had previously been quite friendly to Miss Stansfield. She had shown

her pictures of her two children, both in high school, and they had

exchanged recipes at one point. Mrs Kelly was always asking her if she had

met 'a nice boy' yet. That kindliness and friendliness was gone now. And

when she stepped into Mrs Kelly's office on her break, Miss Stansfield told

me, she knew what to expect.

'You're in trouble,' this previously kind woman said curtly.

'Yes,' Miss Stansfield said. 'It's called that by some people.'

Mrs Kelly's cheeks had gone the colour of old brick. 'Don't you be smart

with me, young woman,' she said. 'From the looks of your belly, you've

been too smart by half already.'

I could see the two of them in my mind's eye as she told me the story-

Miss Stansfield, her direct hazel eyes fixed on Mrs Kelly, perfectly

composed, refusing to drop her eyes, or weep, or exhibit shame in any other

way. I believe she had a much more practical conception of the trouble she

was in than her supervisor did, with her two almost grown children and her

respectable husband, who owned his own barbershop and voted Republican.

'I must say you show remarkably little shame at the way you've deceived

me!' Mrs Kelly burst out bitterly.

'I have never deceived you. No mention of my pregnancy has been made

until today.' She looked at Mrs Kelly almost curiously. 'How can you say I

have deceived you?'

'I took you home!' Mrs Kelly cried. 'I had you to dinner with my sons.'

She looked at Miss Stansfield with utter loathing.

This is when Miss Stansfield began to grow angry. Angrier, she told me,

than she had ever been in her life. She had not been unaware of the sort of

reaction she could expect when the secret came out, but as any one of you

gentlemen will attest, the difference between academic theory and practical

application can sometimes be shockingly huge.

Clutching her hands firmly together in her lap, Miss Stansfield said: 'If

you are suggesting I made or ever would make any attempt to seduce your

sons, that's the dirtiest, filthiest thing I've ever heard in my life.'

Mrs Kelly's head rocked back as if she had been slapped. That bricky

colour drained from her cheeks, leaving only two small spots of hectic

colour. The two women looked grimly at each other across a desk littered

with perfume samples in a room that smelled vaguely of flowers. It was a

moment, Miss Stansfield said, that seemed much longer than it actually

could have been.

Then Mrs Kelly yanked open one of her drawers and brought out a buff-

coloured cheque.

A bright pink severance slip was attached to it. Showing her teeth,

actually seeming to bite off each word, she said, 'With hundreds of decent

girls looking for work in this city, I hardly think we need a strumpet such as

yourself in our employ, dear.'

She told me it was that final, contemptuous 'dear' that brought all her

anger to a sudden head. A moment later Mrs Kelly's jaw dropped and her

eyes widened as Miss Stansfield, her hands locked together as tightly as

links in a steel chain, so tightly she left bruises on herself (they were fading

but still perfectly visible when I saw her on 1 September), began to

'locomotive' between her clenched teeth.

It wasn't a funny story, perhaps, but I burst out laughing at the image and

Miss Stansfield joined me. Mrs Davidson looked in-to make sure we hadn't

gotten into the nitrous oxide, perhaps-and then left again.

'It was all I could think to do,' Miss Stansfield said, still laughing and

wiping her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. 'Because at that moment,

I saw myself reaching out and simply sweeping those sample bottles of

perfume-every one of them-off her desk and onto the floor, which was

uncarpeted concrete. I didn't just think it, I saw it! I saw them crashing to

the floor and filling the room with such a God-awful mixed stench that the

fumigators would have to come.

'I was going to do it; nothing was going to stop me doing it. Then I began

to Breathe, and everything was all right. I was able to take the cheque, and

the pink slip, and get up, and get out. I wasn't able to thank her, of course- I

was still being a locomotive"

We laughed again, and then she sobered.

'It's all passed off now, and I am even able to feel a little sorry for her-or

does that sound like a terribly stiff-necked thing to say?'

'Not at all. I think it's an admirable way to be able to feel.'

'May I show you something I bought with my severance pay, Dr

McCarron?'

'Yes, if you like.'

She opened her purse and took out a small flat box. 'I bought it at a

pawnshop,' she said.

'For two dollars. And it's the only time during this whole nightmare that

I've felt ashamed and dirty. Isn't that strange?'

She opened the box and laid it on my desk so I could look inside. I wasn't

surprised at what I saw. It was a plain gold wedding ring.

'I'll do what's necessary,' she said. 'I am staying in what Mrs Kelly would

undoubtedly call "a respectable boarding house". My landlady has been

kind and friendly but Mrs Kelly was kind and friendly, too. I think she

may ask me to leave at any time now, and I suspect that if I say anything

about the rent-balance due me, or the damage deposit I paid when I moved

in, she'll laugh in my face.'

'My dear young woman, that would be quite illegal. There are courts and

lawyers to help you answer such -'

The courts are men's clubs,' she said steadily, 'and not apt to go out of

their way to befriend a woman in my position. Perhaps I could get my

money back, perhaps not.

Either way, the expense and the trouble and the the unpleasantness

hardly seem worth the forty-seven dollars or so. I had no business

mentioning it to you in the first place. It hasn't happened yet, and maybe it

won't. But in any case, I intend to be practical from now on.'

She raised her head, and her eyes flashed at mine.

'I've got my eye on a place down in the Village-just in case. It's on the

third floor, but it's clean, and it's five dollars a month cheaper than where

I'm staying now.' She picked the ring out of the box. 'I wore this when the

landlady showed me the room.'

She put it on the third finger of her left hand with a small moue of disgust

of which I believe she was unaware. There. Now I'm Mrs Stansfield. My

husband was a truck-driver who was killed on the Pittsburgh-New York run.

Very sad. But I am no longer a little roundheels strumpet, and my child is

no longer a bastard.'

She looked up at me, and the tears were in her eyes again. As I watched,

one of them overspilled and rolled down her cheek.

'Please,' I said, distressed, and reached across the desk to take her hand. It

was very, very cold. 'Don't, my dear.'

She turned her hand-it was the left-over in my hand and looked at the

ring. She smiled, and that smile was as bitter as gall and vinegar, gentlemen.

Another tear fell-just that one.

'When I hear cynics say that the days of magic and miracles are all

behind us, Dr McCarron, I'll know they're deluded, won't I? When you can

buy a ring in a pawnshop for a dollar and a half and that ring will instantly

erase both bastardy and licentiousness, what else would you call that but

magic? Cheap magic.'

'Miss Stansfield Sandra, if I may if you need help, if there's anything I

can

do -'

She drew her hand away from me-if I had taken her right hand instead of

her left, perhaps she would not have done. I did not love her, I've told you,

but in that moment I could have loved her; I was on the verge of falling in

love with her. Perhaps, if I'd taken her right hand instead of the one with

that lying ring on it, and if she had allowed me to hold her hand only a little

longer, until my own warmed it, perhaps then I should have.

'You're a good, kind man, and you've done a great deal for me and my

baby and your Breathing Method is a much better kind of magic than this

awful ring. After all, it kept me from being jailed on charges of wilful

destruction, didn't it?'

She left soon after that, and I went to the window to watch her move off

down the street towards Madison Avenue. God, I admired her just then: She

looked so slight, so young, and so obviously pregnant-but there was still

nothing timid or tentative about her. She did not scutter up the street; she

walked as if she had every right to her place on the sidewalk.

She left my view and I turned back to my desk. As I did so, the framed

photograph which hung on the wall next to my diploma caught my eye, and

a terrible shudder worked through me. My skin-all of it, even the skin on

my forehead and the backs of my hands-crawled up into cold knots of

gooseflesh. The most suffocating fear of my entire life fell on me like a

horrible shroud, and I found myself gasping for breath. It was a

precognitive interlude, gentlemen. I do not take part in arguments about

whether or not such things can occur; I know they can, because it has

happened to me. Just that once, on that hot early September afternoon. I

pray to God I never have another.

The photograph had been taken by my mother on the day I finished

medical school. It showed me standing in front of White Memorial, hands

behind my back, grinning like a kid who's just gotten a full-day pass to the

rides at Palisades Park. To my left the statue of Harriet White can be seen,

and although the photograph cuts her off at about mid-shin, the pedestal and

that queerly heartless inscription-There is no comfort without pain; thus we

define salvation through suffering-could be clearly seen. It was at the foot

of the statue of my grandfather's first wife, directly below that inscription,

that Sandra Stansfield died not quite four months later in a senseless

accident that occurred just as she arrived at the hospital to deliver her child.

She exhibited some anxiety that fall that I would not be there to attend

her during her labour-that I would be away for the Christmas holidays or

not on call. She was partly afraid that she would be delivered by some

doctor who would ignore her wish to use the Breathing Method and who

would instead give her gas or a spinal block. I assured her as best I could. I

had no reason to leave the city, no family to visit over the holidays. My

mother had died two years before, and there was no one else except a

maiden aunt in California and the train didn't agree with me, I told Miss

Stansfield. 'Are you ever lonely?' she asked.

'Sometimes. Usually I keep too busy. Now, take this.' I jotted my home

telephone number on a card and gave it to her. 'If you get the answering

service when your labour begins, call me here.'

'Oh, no, I couldn't-'

'Do you want to use the Breathing Method, or do you want to get some

sawbones who'll think you're mad and give you a capful of ether as soon as

you start to "locomotive"?' She smiled a little. 'All right. I'm convinced.'

But as the autumn progressed and the butchers on 3rd Avenue began

advertising the per-pound price of their 'young and succulent Toms', it

became clear that her mind was still not at rest She had indeed been asked

to leave the place where she had been living when I first met her, and had

moved to the Village. But that, at least, had turned out quite well for her.

She had even found work of a sort. A blind woman with a fairly

comfortable income had hired her to come in twice a week, do some light

housework, and then to read to her from the works of Jean Stratton-Porter

and Pearl Buck. She had taken on that blooming, rosy look that most

healthy women come to have during the final trimester of their pregnancies.

But there was a shadow on her face. I would speak to her and she would be

slow to answer and once, when she didn't answer at all, I looked up from

the notes I was making and saw her looking at the framed photograph next

to my diploma with a strange, dreamy expression in her eyes. I felt a

recurrence of that chill and her response, which had nothing to do with my

question, hardly made me feel easier. 'I have a feeling, Dr McCarron,

sometimes quite a strong feeling, that I am doomed.' Silly, melodramatic

word! And yet, gentlemen, the response that rose to my own lips was this:

Yes; I feel that, too. I bit it off, of course; a doctor who would say such a

thing should immediately put his instruments and medical books up for sale

and investigate his future in the plumbing or carpentry business.

I told her that she was not the first pregnant woman to have such feelings,

and would not be the last. I told her that the feeling was indeed so common

that doctors knew it by the tongue-in-cheek name of The Valley of the

Shadow Syndrome. I've already mentioned it tonight, I believe.

Miss Stansfield nodded with perfect seriousness, and I remember how

young she looked that day, and how large her belly seemed. 'I know about

that,' she said. 'I've felt it. But it's quite separate from this other feeling. This

other feeling is like like something looming up. I can't describe it any

better than that. It's silly, but I can't shake it.'

'You must try,' I said. 'It isn't good for the -'

But she had drifted away from me. She was looking at the photograph

again. 'Who is that?'

'Emlyn McCarron,' I said, trying to make a joke. It sounded

extraordinarily feeble. 'Back before the Civil War, when he was quite

young.'

'No, I recognized you, of course,' she said. "The woman. Who is the

woman?'

'Her name is Harriet White,' I said, and thought: And hers will be the first

face you see when you arrive to deliver your child. The chill came back-that

dreadful drifting formless chill. Her stone face.

'And what does it say there at the base of the statue?' she asked, her eyes

still dreamy, almost trancelike.

'I don't know,' I lied. 'My conversational Latin is not that good.'

That night I had the worst dream of my entire life -I woke up from it in

utter terror, and if I had been married, I suppose I would have frightened my

poor wife to death.

In the dream I opened the door to my consulting room and found Sandra

Stansfield in there. She was wearing the brown pumps, the smart white

linen dress with the brown edging, and the slightly out-of-date cloche hat.

But the hat was between her breasts, because she was carrying her head in

her arms. The white linen was stained and streaked with gore. Blood jetted

from her neck and splattered the ceiling.

And then her eyes fluttered open-those wonderful hazel eyes-and they

fixed on mine.

'Doomed,' the speaking head told me. 'Doomed. I'm doomed. There's no

salvation without suffering. It's cheap magic, but it's all we have.'

That's when I woke up screaming: Her due date of 10 December came

and went. I examined her on 17 December and suggested that, while the

baby would almost certainly be born in 1935, I no longer expected the child

to put in his or her appearance until after Christmas. Miss Stansfield

accepted this with good grace. She seemed to have thrown off the shadow

that had hung over her that fall. Mrs Gibbs, the blind woman who had hired

her to read aloud and do light housework, was impressed with her-

impressed enough to tell her friends about the brave young widow who, in

spite of her recent bereavement and delicate condition, was facing her own

future with such determined good cheer. Several of the blind woman's

friends had expressed an interest in employing her following the birth of her

child.

'I'll take them up on it, too,' she told me. 'For the baby. But only until I'm

on my feet again, and able to find something steady. Sometimes I think the

worst part of this -of everything that's happened-is that it's changed the way

I look at people. Sometimes I think to myself, "How can you sleep at night,

knowing that you've deceived that dear old thing?" and then I think, "If she

knew, she'd show you the door, just like all the others."

Either way, it's a lie, and I feel the weight of it on my heart sometimes.'

Before she left that day, she took a small, gaily wrapped package from

her purse and slid it shyly across the desk to me. 'Merry Christmas, Dr

McCarron.'

'You shouldn't have,' I said, sliding open a drawer and taking out a

package of my own.

'But since I did, too -'

She looked at me for a moment, surprised and then we laughed

together. She had gotten me a silver tie-clasp with the medical symbol on it.

I had gotten her an album in which to keep photographs of her baby. I still

have the tie-clasp. What happened to the album, I cannot say.

I saw her to the door, and as we reached it, she turned to me, put her

hands on my shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and kissed me on the mouth. Her

lips were cool and firm. It was not a passionate kiss, gentlemen, but neither

was it the sort of kiss you might expect from a sister or an aunt.

'Thank you again, Dr McCarron,' she said a little breathlessly. The colour

was high in her cheeks and her hazel eyes glowed lustrously. 'Thank you for

so much.'

I laughed-a little uneasily. 'You speak as if we'll never meet again,

Sandra.' It was, I believe, the second and last time I ever used her Christian

name.

'Oh, we'll meet again,' she said. 'I don't doubt it a bit.'

And she was right-although neither of us could have foreseen the

dreadful cricumstances of that last meeting.

Sandra Stansfield's labour began on Christmas Eve, at just past six p. m.

By that time, the snow which had fallen all that day had changed to sleet.

And by the time Miss Stansfield entered mid-labour, not quite two hours

later, the city streets were a dangerous glaze of ice.

Mrs Gibbs, the blind woman, had a large and spacious first-floor

apartment, and at 6:30 p. m. Miss Stansfield worked her way carefully

downstairs, knocked at her door, was admitted, and asked if she might use

the telephone to call a cab.

'Is it the baby, dear?' Mrs Gibbs asked, fluttering already.

'Yes. The labour's only begun, but I can't chance the weather. It will take

a cab a long time.'

She made that call and then called me. At that time, 6:40, the pains were

coming at intervals of about twenty-five minutes. She repeated to me that

she had begun everything early because of the foul weather. 'I'd rather not

have my child in the back of a Yellow,' she said. She sounded

extraordinarily calm.

The cab was late and Miss Stansfield's labour was progressing more

rapidly than I would have predicted-but as I have said, no two labours are

alike in their specifics. The driver, seeing that his fare was about to have a

baby, helped her down the slick steps, constantly adjuring her to 'be careful,

lady'. Miss Stansfield only nodded, preoccupied with her deep inhale-

exhales as a fresh contraction seized her. Sleet ticked off streetlights and the

roofs of cars; it melted in large, magnifying drops on the taxi's yellow

dome-light. Miss Gibbs told me later that the young cab driver was more

nervous than her 'poor, dear Sandra', and that was probably a contributing

cause to the accident.

Another was almost certainly the Breathing Method itself.

The driver threaded his hack through the slippery streets, working his

way slowly past the fender-benders and inching through the clogged

intersections, slowly closing on the hospital. He was not seriously injured in

the accident, and I talked to him in the hospital.

He said the sound of the steady deep breathing coming from the back seat

made him nervous; he kept looking in the rear view mirror to see if she was

'dine or sumpin'. He said he would have felt less nervous if she had let out a

few healthy bellows, the way a woman in labour was supposed to do. He

asked her once or twice if she was feeling all right and she only nodded,

continuing to 'ride the waves' in deep inhales and exhales.

Two or three blocks from the hospital, she must have felt the onset of

labour's final stage.

An hour had passed since she had entered the cab-the traffic was that

snarled-but this was still an extraordinarily fast labour for a woman having

her first baby. The driver noticed the change in the way she was breathing.

'She started pantin' like a dog on a hot day, Doc,' he told me. She had begun

to 'locomotive'.

At almost the same time the cabbie saw a hole open up in the crawling

cross-traffic and shot through it The way to White Memorial was now open.

It was less than three blocks ahead. 'I could see the statue of that broad,' he

said. Eager to be rid of his

panting, pregnant passenger, he stepped down on the gas again and the

cab leaped forward, wheels spinning over the ice with little or no traction.

I had walked to the hospital, and my arrival coincided with the cab's

arrival only because I had underestimated just how bad driving conditions

had become. I believed I would find her upstairs, a legally admitted patient

with all her papers signed, her prep completed, working her way steadily

through her mid-labour. I was mounting the steps when I saw the sudden

sharp convergence of two sets of headlights reflected from the patch of ice

where the janitors hadn't yet spread cinders. I turned just in time to see it

happen.

An ambulance was nosing its way out of the Emergency Wing rampway

as Miss Stansfield's cab came across the Square and towards the hospital.

The cab was simply going too fast to stop. The cabbie panicked and

stamped down on the brake-pedal rather than pumping it. The cab slid, then

began to turn broadside. The pulsing dome-light of the ambulance threw

moving stripes and blotches of blood-coloured light over the scene, and,

freakishly, one of these illuminated the face of Sandra Stansfield. For that

one moment it was the face in my dream, the same bloody, open-eyed face

that I had seen on her severed head.

I cried out her name, took two steps down, slipped, and fell sprawling. I

cracked my elbow a paralyzing blow but somehow managed to hold on to

my black bag. I saw the rest of what happened from where I lay, head

ringing, elbow smarting. The ambulance braked, and it also began to

fishtail. Its rear end struck the base of the statue. The loading doors flew

open. A stretcher, mercifully empty, shot out like a tongue and then crashed

upside down in the street with its wheels spinning. A young woman on the

sidewalk screamed as the two vehicles approached each other and tried to

run. Her feet went out from under her after two strides and she fell on her

stomach. Her purse flew out of her hand and shot down the icy sidewalk

like a weight in a pinball bowling game. The cab swung all the way around,

now travelling backwards, and I could see the cabbie clearly. He was

spinning his wheel madly, like a kid in a Dodgem Car. The ambulance

rebounded from Mrs White's statue at an angle and smashed broadside

into the cab. The taxi spun around once in a tight circle and was slammed

against the base of the statue with fearful force. Its yellow light, the letters

ON RADIO CALL still flashing, exploded like a bomb. The left side of the

cab crumpled like tissue-paper. A moment later I saw that it was not just the

left side; the cab had struck an angle of the pedestal hard enough to tear it in

two. Glass sprayed onto the slick ice like diamonds. And my patient was

thrown through the rear right-side window of the dismembered cab like a

rag-doll. I was on my feet again without even knowing it. I raced down the

icy steps, slipped again, caught at the railing, and kept on. I was only aware

of Miss Stansfield lying in the uncertain shadow cast by that hideous statue

of Harriet White, some twenty feet from where the ambulance had come to

rest on its side, flasher still strobing the night with red. There was

something terribly wrong with that figure, but I honestly don't believe I

knew what it was until my foot struck something with a heavy enough thud

to almost send me sprawling again. The thing I'd kicked skittered away-like

the young woman's purse, it slid rather than rolled. It skittered away and it

was only the fall of hair-bloodstreaked but still recognizably blonde,

speckled with bits of glass-that made me realize what it was. She had been

decapitated in the accident. What I had kicked into the frozen gutter was her

head.

Moving in total numb shock, now I reached her body and turned it over. I

think I tried to scream as soon as I had done it, as soon as I saw. If I did, no

sound came out; I could not make a sound. The woman was still breathing,

you see,

gentlemen. Her chest was heaving up and down in quick, light, shallow

breaths. Ice pattered down on her open coat and her blood-drenched dress.

And I could hear a high, thin whistling noise. It waxed and waned like a

teakettle which can't quite reach the boil. It was air being pulled into her

severed windpipe and then exhaled again; the little screams of air through

the crude reed of the vocal chords which no longer had a mouth to shape

their sounds. I wanted to run but I had no strength; I fell on my knees beside

her on the ice, one hand cupped to my mouth. A moment later I was aware

of fresh blood seeping through the lower part of her dress-and of movement

there. I became suddenly, frenziedly convinced that there was still a chance

to save the baby.

'Cheap magic!' I roared into the sleet, and I believe that as I yanked her

dress up to her waist I began laughing. I believe I was mad. Her body was

warm. I remember that. I remember the way it heaved with her breathing.

One of the ambulance attendants came up, weaving like a drunk, one hand

clapped to the side of his head. Blood trickled through his fingers.

'Cheap magic!' I screamed again, still laughing, still groping. My hands

had found her fully dilated.

The attendant stared down at Sandra Stansfield's headless body with wide

eyes. I don't know if he realized the corpse was still somehow breathing or

not Perhaps he thought it was merely a thing of the nerves- a kind of final

reflex action. If he did think such a thing, he could not have been driving an

ambulance long. Chickens may walk around for a while with their heads cut

off, but people only twitch once or twice if that 'Stop staring at her and get

me a blanket,' I snapped at him.

He wandered away, but not back towards the ambulance. He was pointed

more or less towards Times Square. He simply walked off into the sleety

night. I have no idea what became of him. I turned back to the dead woman

who was somehow not dead, hesitated a moment, and then stripped off my

overcoat. Then I lifted her hips so I could get it under her. Still I heard that

whistle of breath as her headless body did 'locomotive' breathing. I

sometimes hear it still, gentlemen. In my dreams.

Please understand that all of this had happened in an extremely short

time-it seemed longer to me, but only because my perceptions had been

heightened to a feverish pitch. People were only beginning to run out of the

hospital to see what had happened, and behind me a woman shrieked as she

saw the severed head lying by the edge of the street. I yanked open my

black bag, thanking God I hadn't lost it in my fall, and pulled out a short

scalpel. I opened it, cut through her underwear, and pulled it off. Now the

ambulance driver approached-he came to within fifteen feet of us and then

stopped dead. I glanced over at him, still wanting that blanket. I wasn't

going to get it from him, I saw; he was staring down at the breathing body,

his eyes widening until it seemed they must slip from their orbits and

simply dangle from their optic nerves like grotesque seeing yo-yos. Then he

dropped to his knees and raised his clasped hands. He meant to pray, I am

quite sure of that. The attendant might not have known he was seeing an

impossibility, but this fellow did. The next moment he had fainted dead

away. I had packed forceps in my bag that night; I don't know why. I hadn't

used such things in three years, not since I had seen a doctor I will not name

punch through a newborn's temple and into the child's brain with one of

those infernal gadgets. The child died instantly. The corpse was 'lost' and

what went on the death certificate was stillborn. But, for whatever reason, I

had them.

Miss Stansfield's body tightened down, her belly clenching, turning from

flesh to stone.

And the baby crowned. I saw the crown for just a moment, bloody and

membranous and pulsing. Pulsing. It was alive, at least then. Definitely

alive.

Stone became flesh again. The crown slipped back out of sight. And a

voice behind me said: 'What can I do, Doctor?'

It was a middle-aged nurse, the sort of woman who is so often the

backbone of our profession. Her face was as pale as milk, and while there

was terror and a kind of superstitious awe on her face as she looked down at

that weirdly breathing body, there was none of that dazed shock which

would have made her difficult and dangerous to work with.

'You can get me a blanket, stat,' I said curtly. 'We've still got a chance, I

think.' Behind her I saw perhaps two dozen people from the hospital

standing on the steps, not wanting to come any closer. How much or how

little did they see? I have no way of knowing for sure. All I know is that I

was avoided for days afterwards (and forever by some of them), and no one,

including this nurse, ever spoke to me of it. She now turned and started

back towards the hospital.

'Nurse!' I called. 'No time for that. Get one from the ambulance. This

baby is coming now.'

She changed course, slipping and sliding through the slush in her white

crepe-soled shoes. I turned back to Miss Stansfield.

Rather than slowing down, the locomotive breathing had actually begun

to speed up and then her body turned hard again, locked and straining. The

baby crowned again. I waited for it to slip back but it did not; it simply kept

coming. There was no need for the forceps after all. The baby all but flew

into my hands. I saw the sleet ticking off its naked, bloody body-for it was a

boy, his sex unmistakable. I saw steam rising from it as the black, icy night

snatched away the last of its mother's heat. Its blood-grimed fists waved

feebly; it uttered a thin, wailing cry.

'Nurse!' I bawled, 'move your ass, you bitch!' It was perhaps inexcusable

language, but for a moment I felt I was back in France, that in a few

moments the shells would begin to whistle overhead with a sound like that

remorselessly ticking sleet; the machine-guns would begin their hellish

stutter; the Germans would begin to materialize out of the murk, running

and slipping and cursing and dying in the mud and smoke. Cheap magic, I

thought, seeing the bodies twist and turn and fall. But you're right, Sandra,

it's all we have. It was the closest I have ever come to losing my mind,

gentlemen.

'NURSE, FOR GOD'S SAKE!'

The baby wailed again-such a tiny, lost sound!-and then it wailed no

more. The steam rising from its skin had thinned to ribbons. I put my mouth

against its face, smelling blood and the bland, damp aroma of placenta. I

breathed into its mouth and heard the jerky sussurrus of its breathing

resume. Then the nurse was there, the blanket in her arms.

I held out my hand for it.

She started to give it to me, and then held it back. 'Doctor, what what if

it's a monster? Some kind of monster?'

'Give me that blanket,' I said. 'Give it to me now, Sarge, before I kick

your fucking asshole right up your fucking shoulderblades.'

'Yes, doctor,' she said with perfect calmness (we must bless the women,

gentlemen, who so often understand simply by not trying to), and gave me

the blanket I wrapped the child and gave it to her.

'If you drop him, Sarge, you'll be eating those stripes.'

'Yes, doctor.'

'It's cheap fucking magic, Sarge, but it's all God left us with.'

'Yes, doctor.'

I watched her half-walk, half-run back to the hospital with the child and

watched the crowd on the steps part for her. Then I rose to my feet and

backed away from the body.

Its breathing, like the baby's, hitched and caught stopped hitched

again stopped

I began to back away from it. My foot struck something. I turned. It was

her head. And obeying some directive from outside of me, I dropped to one

knee and turned the head over. The eyes were open-those direct hazel eyes

that had always been full of such life and such determination. They were

full of determination still. Gentlemen, she was seeing me.

Her teeth were clenched, her lips slightly parted. I heard the breath

slipping rapidly back and forth between those lips and through those teeth

as she "locomotived". Her eyes moved; they rolled slightly to the left in

their sockets so as to see me better. Her lips parted. They mouthed four

words: Thank you, Doctor McCarron. And I heard them, gentlemen, but not

from her mouth. They came from twenty feet away. From her vocal cords.

And because her tongue and lips and teeth, all of which we use to shape our

words, were here, they came out only in unformed modulations of sound.

But there were seven of them, seven distinct sounds, just as there are seven

syllables in that phrase, Thank you, Doctor McCarron.

'You're welcome, Miss Stansfield,' I said. 'It's a boy.' Her lips moved

again, and from behind me, thin, ghostly, came the sound hoyyyyyy-Her

eyes lost their focus and their determination. They seemed now to look at

something beyond me, perhaps in that black, sleety sky. Then they closed.

She began to locomotive again and then she simply stopped. Whatever

had happened was now over. The nurse had seen some of it, the ambulance

driver had perhaps seen some of it before he fainted.

But it was over now, over for sure. There was only the remains of an ugly

accident out here and a new baby in there.

I looked up at the statue of Harriet White and there she still stood,

looking stonily away towards the Garden across the way, as if nothing of

any particular note had happened, as if such determination in a world as

hard and as senseless as this one meant nothing or worse still, that it was

perhaps the only thing which meant anything, the only thing that made any

difference at all.

As I recall, I knelt there in the slush before her severed head and began to

weep. As I recall, I was still weeping when an intern and two nurses helped

me to my feet and inside.

McCarron's pipe had gone out.

He relit it with his bolt-lighter while we sat in perfect, breathless silence.

Outside, the wind howled and moaned. He snapped his lighter closed and

looked up. He seemed mildly surprised to find us still there.

'That's all,' he said.' That's the end! What are you waiting for? Chariots of

fire?' He snorted, then seemed to debate for a moment 'I paid her burial

expenses out of my own pocket She had no one else, you see.' He smiled a

little. 'Well there was Ella Davidson, my nurse. She insisted on chipping in

twenty-five dollars, which she could ill afford. But when Davidson insisted

on a thing-' He shrugged, and then laughed a little. 'You're quite sure it

wasn't a reflex?' I heard myself demanding suddenly. 'Are you quite sure -'

'Quite sure,' McCarron said imperturbably. 'The first contraction, perhaps.

But the completion of her labour was not a matter of seconds but of

minutes. And I sometimes think she might have held on even longer, if it

had been necessary. Thank God it was not.'

'What about the baby?' Johanssen asked.

McCarron puffed at his pipe. 'Adopted,' he said. 'And you'll understand

that, even in those days, adoption records were kept as secret as possible.'

'Yes, but what about the baby?' Johanssen asked again, and McCarron

laughed in a cross way.

'You never let go of a thing, do you?' he asked Johanssen.

Johanssen shook his head. 'Some people have learned it to their sorrow.

What about the baby?'

'Well, if you've come with me this far perhaps you'll also understand that

I had a certain vested interest in knowing how it all came out for that child.

Or I felt that I did. There was a young man and his wife-their name was not

Harrison, but that is close enough. They lived in Maine. They could have no

children of their own. They adopted the child and named him well, John's

good enough, isn't it? John will do you fellows, won't it?' He puffed at his

pipe but it had gone out again. I was faintly aware of Stevens hovering

behind me, and knew that somewhere our coats would be at the ready. Soon

we would slip back into them and back into our lives. As McCarron had

said, the tales were done for another year.

The child I delivered that night is now head of the English Department at

one of the two or three most respected private colleges in the country,'

McCarron said. 'He's not forty-five yet. A young man. It's early for him, but

the day may well come when he will be President of that school. I shouldn't

doubt it a bit. He is handsome, intelligent, and charming.

'Once, on a pretext, I was able to dine with him in the private faculty

club. We were four that evening. I said little and so was able to watch him.

He has his mother's determination, gentlemen ' and his mother's hazel

eyes.'

3: The Club

Stevens saw us out as he always did, holding coats, wishing men the

happiest of happy Christmases, thanking them for their generosity. I

contrived to be the last, and Stevens looked at me with no surprise when I

said: 'I have a question I'd like to ask, if you don't mind.'

He smiled a little. 'I suppose you should,' he said, 'Christmas is a fine

time for questions.'

Somewhere down the hallway to our left- a hall I had never been down- a

grandfather clock ticked sonorously, the sound of the age passing away. I

could smell old leather and oiled wood and, much more faintly than either

of these, the smell of Stevens's aftershave.

'But I should warn you,' Stevens added as the wind rose in a gust outside,

'it's better not to ask too much. Not if you want to keep coming here.'

'People have been closed out for asking too much?' Closed out was not

really the phrase I wanted, but it was as close as I could come.

'No,' Stevens said, his voice as low and polite as ever. 'They simply

choose to stay away.'

I returned his gaze, feeling a chill prickle its way up my back-it was as if

a large, cold, invisible hand had been laid on my spine. I found myself

remembering that strangely liquid thump I had heard upstairs one night and

wondered (as I had more than once before) exactly how many rooms there

really were here.

'If you still have a question, Mr Adley, perhaps you'd better ask it. The

evening's almost over -'

'And you have a long train-ride ahead of you?' I asked, but Stevens only

looked at me impassively. 'All right,' I said. There are books in this library

that I can't find anywhere else-not in the New York Public Library, not in

the catalogues of any of the antiquarian book-dealers I've checked with, and

certainly not in Books in Print. The billiard table in the Small Room is a

Nord. I'd never heard of such a brand, and so I called the International

Trademark Commission. They have two Nords-one makes crosscountry

skis and the other makes wooden kitchen accessories. There's a Seafront

jukebox in the Long Room. The ITC has a Seeburg listed, but no Seafront.'

'What is your question, Mr Adley?'

His voice was as mild as ever, but there was something terrible in his

eyes suddenly no; if I am to be truthful, it was not just in his eyes; the

terror I felt had infused the atmosphere all around me. The steady tock-tock

from down the lefthand hall was no longer the pendulum of a grandfather

clock; it was the tapping foot of the executioner as he watches the

condemned led to the scaffold. The smells of oil and leather turned bitter

and menacing, and when the wind rose in another wild whoop, I felt

momentarily sure that the front door would blow open, revealing not 35th

Street but an insane Clark Ashton Smith landscape where the bitter shapes

of twisted trees stood silhouetted on a sterile horizon below. which double

suns were setting in a gruesome red glare.

Oh, he knew what I had meant to ask; I saw it in his grey eyes.

Where do all these things come from? I had meant to ask. Oh, I know

well enough where you come from, Stevens; that accent isn't Dimension X,

it's pure Brooklyn. But where do you go? What has put that timeless look in

your eyes and stamped it on your face? And, Stevens-- where are we

RIGHT THIS SECOND?

But he was waiting for my question.

I opened my mouth. And the question that came out was: 'Are there many

more rooms upstairs?'

'Oh, yes, sir,' he said, his eyes never leaving mine. 'A great many. A man

could become lost In fact, men have become lost. Sometimes it seems to me

that they go on for miles. Rooms and corridors.'

'And entrances and exits?'

His eyebrows went up slightly. 'Oh yes. Entrances and exits.' He waited,

but I had asked enough, I thought -I had come to the very edge of

something that would, perhaps, drive me mad.

"Thank you, Stevens.'

'Of course, sir.' He held out my coat and I slipped into it.

'There will be more tales?'

'Here, sir, there are always more tales.'

That evening was some time ago, and my memory has not improved

between then and now (when a man reaches my age, the opposite is much

more likely to be true), but I remember with perfect clarity the stab of fear

that went through me when Stevens swung the oaken door wide-the cold

certainty that I would see that alien landscape, cracked and hellish in the

bloody light of those double suns, which might set and bring on an

unspeakable darkness of an hour's duration, or ten hours, or ten thousand

years. I cannot explain it, but I tell you that world exists-I am as sure of that

as Emlyn McCarron was sure that the severed head of Sandra Stansfield

went on breathing. I thought for that one timeless second that the door

would open and

Stevens would thrust me out into that world and I would then hear that

door slam shut behind me forever.

Instead, I saw 35th Street and a radio-cab standing at the curb, exhaling

plumes of exhaust. I felt an utter, almost debilitating relief.

'Yes, always more tales,' Stevens repeated. 'Goodnight, sir.' Always more

tales.

Indeed there have been. And, one day soon, perhaps I'll tell you another.

The End

Table of Contents
RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
APT PUPIL
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17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
THE BODY
1
2
3

5
7
8
9
10
13
14
15
16
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
THE BREATHING METHOD
1: The Club
2: The Breathing Method
3: The Club